Journey Through Genius
Journey Through Genius

Author: William Dunham

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 1991-08

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13:

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Like masterpieces of art, music, and literature, great mathematical theorems are creative milestones, works of genius destined to last forever. Now William Dunham gives them the attention they deserve. Dunham places each theorem within its historical context and explores the very human and often turbulent life of the creator — from Archimedes, the absentminded theoretician whose absorption in his work often precluded eating or bathing, to Gerolamo Cardano, the sixteenth-century mathematician whose accomplishments flourished despite a bizarre array of misadventures, to the paranoid genius of modern times, Georg Cantor. He also provides step-by-step proofs for the theorems, each easily accessible to readers with no more than a knowledge of high school mathematics. A rare combination of the historical, biographical, and mathematical, Journey Through Genius is a fascinating introduction to a neglected field of human creativity. “It is mathematics presented as a series of works of art; a fascinating lingering over individual examples of ingenuity and insight. It is mathematics by lightning flash.” —Isaac Asimov

Philosophical Aspects of Symbolic Reasoning in Early Modern Mathematics
Philosophical Aspects of Symbolic Reasoning in Early Modern Mathematics

Author: Albrecht Heeffer

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9781848900172

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The novel use of symbolism in early modern mathematics poses both philosophical and historical questions. How can we trace its development and transmission through manuscript sources? Is it intrinsically related to the emergence of symbolic algebra? How does symbolism relate to the use of diagrams? What are the consequences of symbolic reasoning on our understanding of nature? Can a symbolic language enable new forms of reasoning? Does a universal symbolic language exists which enables us to express all knowledge? This book brings together a collection of papers that address all these and related questions ? which were initially posed on a conference held in Ghent (Belgium) in August 2009. Scholars working on philosophy of science, history of philosophy and history of mathematics provide an insight into the role and function of symbolic representations in the development of early modern mathematics. The papers cover the period from early abbaco arithmetic and algebra (14th century) up to Leibniz (early 18th century).

Descartes’s Mathematical Thought
Descartes’s Mathematical Thought

Author: C. Sasaki

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2003-11-30

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 9781402017469

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Covering both the history of mathematics and of philosophy, Descartes's Mathematical Thought reconstructs the intellectual career of Descartes most comprehensively and originally in a global perspective including the history of early modern China and Japan. Especially, it shows what the concept of "mathesis universalis" meant before and during the period of Descartes and how it influenced the young Descartes. In fact, it was the most fundamental mathematical discipline during the seventeenth century, and for Descartes a key notion which may have led to his novel mathematics of algebraic analysis.

Mathematics and War
Mathematics and War

Author: Bernhelm Booß-Bavnbek

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 3034880936

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Mathematics has for centuries been stimulated, financed and credited by military purposes. Some mathematical thoughts and mathematical technology have also been vital in war. During World War II mathematical work by the Anti-Hitler coalition was part of an aspiration to serve humanity and not help destroy it. At present, it is not an easy task to view the bellicose potentials of mathematics in a proper perspective. The book presents historical evidence and recent changes in the interaction between mathematics and the military. It discusses the new mathematically enhanced development of military technology which seems to have changed the very character of modern warfare.

The Arithmetic of Infinitesimals
The Arithmetic of Infinitesimals

Author: John Wallis

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1475743122

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John Wallis (1616-1703) was the most influential English mathematician prior to Newton. He published his most famous work, Arithmetica Infinitorum, in Latin in 1656. This book studied the quadrature of curves and systematised the analysis of Descartes and Cavelieri. Upon publication, this text immediately became the standard book on the subject and was frequently referred to by subsequent writers. This will be the first English translation of this text ever to be published.

A Discourse Concerning Algebra
A Discourse Concerning Algebra

Author: Jacqueline A. Stedall

Publisher: Mathematics

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780198524953

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A Discourse Concerning Algebra, provides a new and readable account of the rise of algebra in England from the Medieval period to the later years of the 17th Century.Stedall's book follows the reception and dissemination of important algebraic ideas and methods from continental Europe and the consequent revolution in the state of English mathematics in the 17th century.

A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers
A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers

Author: John Stillwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 77

ISBN-13: 1108456235

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This Element aims to present an outline of mathematics and its history, with particular emphasis on events that shook up its philosophy. It ranges from the discovery of irrational numbers in ancient Greece to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century discoveries on the nature of infinity and proof. Recurring themes are intuition and logic, meaning and existence, and the discrete and the continuous. These themes have evolved under the influence of new mathematical discoveries and the story of their evolution is, to a large extent, the story of philosophy of mathematics.