Career
In 1799, during the Napoleonic period, he lived in Capodimonte but, when the Borbonic monarchy was restated, he was appointed to the mathematics chair in the Neapolitan university. In 1821 he suffered a stroke which left him bound for the rest of his life. Fergola was one of the protagonists of an ideological quarrel among the Neapolitan scientists at the end of 18th century and the first half of 19th.
In the field of mathematics, the quarrel was about the use of synthetic or analytic methods.
Fergola and his student Vincenzo Flauti, were the supporters of the synthetic methods and they were opposed by the mathematicians of the Royal Military School, as Carlo Lauberg and others The Borbonic restoration in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with his ultraconservative profile, made possible the maintenance of this school until the Risorgimento, but at the end of 19th century it was absolutely forgotten.
To see a taste of the quarrel, here are the words pronounced by Gioacchino Ventura di Raulica in the obituary of Nicola Fergola:
Among the sciences, the mathematical ones are those which have taken the more false and disastrous direction. The only work of Fergola is Prelezioni sui Principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavalier Isacco Newton, published in two volumes in 1792 and 1793.
This religious conception is seen in all of Fergola"s mathematical works.
In 1839, was published Fergola"s manuscript entitled Teorica de miracoli esposta con metodo dimostrativo in which Fergola tried to demonstrate the possibility of the miracles in a mathematical way: proposition, demonstration, theorem, lemma, scolium, id est (that is)