Quote:
Originally Posted by yaaarrrgg  As far as least favorite philospher, probably George Berkeley (I don't really even consider him a philosopher  ). I'm not sure how he made a living mocking Newton's calculus, while simultaneously spewing half-baked ideas of his own.  |
Berkeley's criticism of Calculus was very fair and very well-done.
Mathematicians of the time knew two things very well:
(a) that Calculus worked; and
(b) that Calculus was on shaky theoretical footing.
They knew what they meant, but they didn't know how to explain it or prove it formally. Oh, the verbal hoops they jumped through.
In the 1800's they fixed it, vindicating (to some extent) Berkeley's complaints.
[Aside: I have no idea what Berkeley wrote on philosophy, I'm only familiar with his famous rant against "ghosts of departed quantities"
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