A Taste of Philosophical Fanaticism; In Some Speculations upon the Four First Chapters of Mr. Green's Principles of Natural Philosophy. By a Gentleman of the University of Gratz in Germany, an Humble Servant to the New Theory of Reflexion and Refraction, and a Well-Willer to the Spectacle-Manufacture, upon the Newtonic System. With a Tripartite Dedication, to the Cambridge Sophs; Mr. G----; and a Refinement upon His to My L.T. Translated from the Original.

Bookseller Notes

This must be a production from within the Cambridge ambit, and the University of Gratz a red herring: indeed, in the first of the Dedications the author identifies himself as a 'Quondam Member, and a most Devoted Servant of that Worshipful and Honourable Fraternity', i.e the Cambridge Sophs. But we have not found that the author has been identified. The text is a delightful mixture of jocosity, serious philosophy, and politics (the split between Tory and Whig sympathisers at Clare College in the period following the general election of 1710). There is a spoof Will at the end of the text, one item of which bequeaths 'The Right of Examining the Affair of the Vacuum to the Emptiest Virtuoso at Gresham, both in Head and Pocket...' The book is a lampoon of Robert Greene's Principles of Natural Philosophy of the same year. In spite of Greene's prolixity, egomania, and disorganisation, Gjertsen (Newton Handbook) finds that 'similar views, expressed in a clearer and sharper form, would be raised later in the century by Boscovich, and would exercise a deep and lasting influence on those who were seeking to develop alternative views of matter.'ESTC records just 4 UK locations, 2 in the BL and 2 in Cambridge libraries, and, in the US, Boston Public, Free Library of Philadelphia, Huntington, and the Universities of Tennessee and Texas.