Truth but not science? George Berkeley and the politics of mathematical authority in the <i>Analyst</i> Controversy

This article reframes the <i>Analyst</i> Controversy, incited by George Berkeley's incendiary tract <i>The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician</i> (1734), as not merely a debate about Newtonian fluxions but as a conflict over epistemic authority and competing ideas and ideals of reason in the Age of Reason. While often treated as a technical episode in the history of calculus, the controversy also reveals deeper tensions about the legitimate production of mathematical knowledge and the status of its truths. By situating the controversy in the broader social and political context of Augustan Britain, this article argues that Berkeley's critique challenged not only the foundations of Newtonian mathematics but also the Lockean social epistemology and Whig ideologies of order in which they were embedded.