British Versions of Book II of Euclid’s Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550–1750)
British Versions of Book II of Euclid’s Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550–1750)

Author: Leo Corry

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-09-12

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 3031115384

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This book discusses the changing conceptions about the relationship between geometry and arithmetic within the Euclidean tradition that developed in the British context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Its focus is on Book II of the Elements and the ways in which algebraic symbolism and methods, especially as recently introduced by François Viète and his followers, took center stage as mediators between the two realms, and thus offered new avenues to work out that relationship in idiosyncratic ways not found in earlier editions of the Euclidean text. Texts examined include Robert Recorde's Pathway to Knowledge (1551), Henry Billingsley’s first English translation of the Elements (1570), Clavis Mathematicae by William Oughtred and Artis Analyticae Praxis by Thomas Harriot (both published in 1631), Isaac Barrow’s versions of the Elements (1660), and John Wallis Treatise of Algebra (1685), and the English translations of Claude Dechales’ French Euclidean Elements (1685). This book offers a completely new perspective of the topic and analyzes mostly unexplored material. It will be of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians with an interest in history and historians of renaissance science in general.

British Versions of Book II of Euclid's Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550-1750)
British Versions of Book II of Euclid's Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550-1750)

Author: Leo Corry

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783031115394

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This book discusses the changing conceptions about the relationship between geometry and arithmetic within the Euclidean tradition that developed in the British context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Its focus is on Book II of the Elements and the ways in which algebraic symbolism and methods, especially as recently introduced by François Viète and his followers, took center stage as mediators between the two realms, and thus offered new avenues to work out that relationship in idiosyncratic ways not found in earlier editions of the Euclidean text. Texts examined include Robert Recorde's Pathway to Knowledge (1551), Henry Billingsley's first English translation of the Elements (1570), Clavis Mathematicae by William Oughtred and Artis Analyticae Praxis by Thomas Harriot (both published in 1631), Isaac Barrow's versions of the Elements (1660), and John Wallis Treatise of Algebra (1685), and the English translations of Claude Dechales' French Euclidean Elements (1685). This book offers a completely new perspective of the topic and analyzes mostly unexplored material. It will be of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians with an interest in history and historians of renaissance science in general.

Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics
Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics

Author: Ekkehard Kopp

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2020-10-23

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1800640978

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Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.

Distributivity-like Results in the Medieval Traditions of Euclid's Elements
Distributivity-like Results in the Medieval Traditions of Euclid's Elements

Author: Leo Corry

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-19

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13: 3030796795

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This book provides a fresh view on an important and largely overlooked aspect of the Euclidean traditions in the medieval mathematical texts, particularly concerning the interrelations between geometry and arithmetic, and the rise of algebraic modes of thought. It appeals to anyone interested in the history of mathematics in general and in history of medieval and early modern science.

A History of Mathematics
A History of Mathematics

Author: Luke Hodgkin

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-02-21

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0191664367

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A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity covers the evolution of mathematics through time and across the major Eastern and Western civilizations. It begins in Babylon, then describes the trials and tribulations of the Greek mathematicians. The important, and often neglected, influence of both Chinese and Islamic mathematics is covered in detail, placing the description of early Western mathematics in a global context. The book concludes with modern mathematics, covering recent developments such as the advent of the computer, chaos theory, topology, mathematical physics, and the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. Containing more than 100 illustrations and figures, this text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates, addresses the methods and challenges associated with studying the history of mathematics. The reader is introduced to the leading figures in the history of mathematics (including Archimedes, Ptolemy, Qin Jiushao, al-Kashi, al-Khwarizmi, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Helmholtz, Hilbert, Alan Turing, and Andrew Wiles) and their fields. An extensive bibliography with cross-references to key texts will provide invaluable resource to students and exercises (with solutions) will stretch the more advanced reader.

5000 Years of Geometry
5000 Years of Geometry

Author: Christoph J. Scriba

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2015-04-22

Total Pages: 638

ISBN-13: 3034808984

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The present volume provides a fascinating overview of geometrical ideas and perceptions from the earliest cultures to the mathematical and artistic concepts of the 20th century. It is the English translation of the 3rd edition of the well-received German book “5000 Jahre Geometrie,” in which geometry is presented as a chain of developments in cultural history and their interaction with architecture, the visual arts, philosophy, science and engineering. Geometry originated in the ancient cultures along the Indus and Nile Rivers and in Mesopotamia, experiencing its first “Golden Age” in Ancient Greece. Inspired by the Greek mathematics, a new germ of geometry blossomed in the Islamic civilizations. Through the Oriental influence on Spain, this knowledge later spread to Western Europe. Here, as part of the medieval Quadrivium, the understanding of geometry was deepened, leading to a revival during the Renaissance. Together with parallel achievements in India, China, Japan and the ancient American cultures, the European approaches formed the ideas and branches of geometry we know in the modern age: coordinate methods, analytical geometry, descriptive and projective geometry in the 17th an 18th centuries, axiom systems, geometry as a theory with multiple structures and geometry in computer sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each chapter of the book starts with a table of key historical and cultural dates and ends with a summary of essential contents of geometr y in the respective era. Compelling examples invite the reader to further explore the problems of geometry in ancient and modern times. The book will appeal to mathematicians interested in Geometry and to all readers with an interest in cultural history. From letters to the authors for the German language edition I hope it gets a translation, as there is no comparable work. Prof. J. Grattan-Guinness (Middlesex University London) "Five Thousand Years of Geometry" - I think it is the most handsome book I have ever seen from Springer and the inclusion of so many color plates really improves its appearance dramatically! Prof. J.W. Dauben (City University of New York) An excellent book in every respect. The authors have successfully combined the history of geometry with the general development of culture and history. ... The graphic design is also excellent. Prof. Z. Nádenik (Czech Technical University in Prague)

On Their Own Terms
On Their Own Terms

Author: Benjamin A. Elman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 0674036476

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In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.