The reception of Newton’s method of series and fluxions in eighteenth-century Europe

According to the received view, eighteenth-century British mathematicians were responsible for a decline of mathematics in the country of Newton; a decline attributed to chauvinism and to preference for geometrical thinking. This chapter challenges this view by first describing the complexity of Newton’s mathematical heritage and its reception in the early decades of the eighteenth century.t is shown that in the middle of the eighteenth century academic Continental mathematicians such as Euler and Lagrange were driven by local cultural assumptions in directions which sensibly diverged from the ones followed by Newton and his fellow countrymen.