James Hume (mathematician) James Hume (mathematician) James Hume (fl. 1639) was a Scottish mathematician. He is given credit for introducing the modern exponential notation, along with René Descartes. The son of David Hume of Godscroft, sometimes therefore called described as "Scotus Theagrius", James Hume lived in France. Theagrius was a pen-name used by his father, and has been thought a macaronic form of "Godscroft". Hume published a Hebrew grammar in Hamburg, in 1624. On the title-page of his "Pantaleonis Vaticinia Satyra", dated Rouen, 1633, Hume is called "Med. Doctor". The "Satyra" is a Latin romance, imitating John Barclay's "Argenis". It is an "elegant
French philosophy sociology and the doctrine of positivism, and may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Strongly influenced by the Utopian socialist, Henri de Saint-Simon, Comte developed the positive philosophy in an attempt to remedy the social malaise of the French revolution, calling for a new social paradigm based on the sciences. Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages'. Comte's stages were (1) the "theological", (2) the "metaphysical", and (3) the "positive". Comte