Genre:

Review

Publications reviewed:

Canard 1801

Subjects:

Political Economy, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Language

People mentioned:

Adam Smith , John H Tooke, John Locke

Institutions mentioned:

Institut Nationale, Paris

    States: 'It may be said of all great and permanant discoveries, which have unfolded the operations of nature, that some occasional gleams of light broke out from time to time, before the full truth was revealed. The whole history of mathematical and physical sciences forms a continued illustration of this remark. [...] In the philosophy of mind, for example, the great fact of association was obscurely percieved by Hobbes, and even by Aristotle [...] the two great discoveries by which Mr Hume and Bishop Berkeley have effected such a memorable revolution in metaphysics, the correct analysis of our ideas of cause, and the precise limitation of our knowledge of external substances, may be traced, the former in the writings of Barrow and Aquinas, the latter in the sceptical system of Democritus. The political economist might adduce similar instances from the history of his science' (446).