William Duncan was a Scottish natural philosopher and classicist, professor of natural philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen.

Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, he was appointed professor of natural philosophy there in 1752. His popular Elements of Logic, first published in Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....

's The Preceptor (2 vols, London, 1848), combined a Lockean

John Locke

John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...

 theory of knowledge with syllogistic logic. He translated the Commentaries of Julius Caesar and orations of Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

; at his death, translations of Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's Lives

Parallel Lives

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century...

 and a continuation of Thomas Blackwell

Thomas Blackwell

Thomas Blackwell the younger, , classical scholar and historian, was born on 4 August 1701 in the city of Aberdeen, son of Rev. Thomas Blackwell , one of the ministers of Aberdeen. He attended the Grammar School of Aberdeen and studied Greek and philosophy at Marischal College, graduating M.A. in...

's Court of Augustus were left unfinished.

Works

• Elements of Logic, 1748
• The Commentaries of Caesar, Translated, 1753
• Cicero's Select Orations, 1756

External links