Item 9 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

4 pp

Edinburgh - JDF has lost no time in distributing WW's circulars. His main reason for writing is to suggest Edinburgh for the BAAS meeting next year. Edinburgh is not to be considered a University town: 'The University can do nothing, it has no status, no power , no funds'. While David Brewster promised to give the most entertaining course of lectures ever given at the University, JDF adheres 'to the very opposite principle' and will be striving 'to foster a spirit for sound physico-mathematical attainment at present nearly unknown in Scotland'. His lectures will be a 'cautious mixture of pure demonstration with experiment and collateral illustration'. However, JDF feels his labours will be wasted for want of an adequate textbook in theoretical mechanics: 'your mechanics has appeared to me far the best book I have met with for teaching from [The First Principles of Mechanics: With Historical and Practical Illustrations, 1832]...But for my purpose it is to long: it is on the whole rather too difficult, and in statics, too complete'. JDF would like WW to do an abridgement of it with less mathematics, coupled with some problems taken from WW's recent work on Dynamics [An Introduction to Dynamics Containing the Laws of Motion and the First Three Sections of the Principia, 1832]. The only work which approaches JDF's criteria is a textbook by Dr Jackson of St. Andrews University: 'but it is a little repulsive, and does not afford the means of passing over the more difficult parts'. John Leslie's 'book is incredibly bad, but its division into Statics and Dynamics renders it preferable to those which want it'.