Work

The Analyst

Overview

The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician: Wherein It Is Examined Whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the Modern Analysis Are More Distinctly Conceived, or More Evidently Deduced, Than Religious Mysteries and Points of Faith, is a book by George Berkeley. It was first published in 1734, first by J. Tonson (London), then by S. Fuller (Dublin). The "infidel mathematician" is believed to have been Edmond Halley, though others have speculated that Isaac Newton was intended.

The book contains a direct attack on the foundations of calculus, specifically on Isaac Newton's notion of fluxions and on Leibniz's notion of infinitesimal change.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed The Analyst

• George Berkeley
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Related ideas

• Empiricism
• George Berkeley
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• Isaac Newton
• Infinitesimal
• Geometry
• Superstition
• Limit (mathematics)
• Satire
• Wikisource
• Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
• Calculus
• Karl Weierstrass
• Thomas Bayes
• Colin Maclaurin
• Edmond Halley
• Alciphron (book)

Place in the tradition

Part of Philosophy of mathematics.

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