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Books > Science & Mathematics > Mathematics > History of mathematics
This book deals with a topic that has been largely neglected by philosophers of science to date: the ability to refer and analyze in tandem. On the basis of a set of philosophical case studies involving both problems in number theory and issues concerning time and cosmology from the era of Galileo, Newton and Leibniz up through the present day, the author argues that scientific knowledge is a combination of accurate reference and analytical interpretation. In order to think well, we must be able to refer successfully, so that we can show publicly and clearly what we are talking about. And we must be able to analyze well, that is, to discover productive and explanatory conditions of intelligibility for the things we are thinking about. The book's central claim is that the kinds of representations that make successful reference possible and those that make successful analysis possible are not the same, so that significant scientific and mathematical work typically proceeds by means of a heterogeneous discourse that juxtaposes and often superimposes a variety of kinds of representation, including formal and natural languages as well as more iconic modes. It demonstrates the virtues and necessity of heterogeneity in historically central reasoning, thus filling an important gap in the literature and fostering a new, timely discussion on the epistemology of science and mathematics.
Originally published in 1962, as the second edition of a 1930 original, 'the main purpose of the book is to give a logical connected account of the subject, by starting with the definition of 'Number' and proceeding in what appears ... to be a natural sequence of steps'. The chapters cover all of the cornerstones of complex mathematical analyses; chapters include, 'Bounds and limits of sequences', 'Integral calculus' and 'Functions of more than one variable'. Multiple examples are included at the end of every chapter to support and illustrate the fundamental concepts; 'I have aimed at presenting the subject in such a way as to make every important concept clearly understood'. Primarily aimed at undergraduates with a background in advanced calculus for study and practice, this comprehensive and dynamic textbook will be of considerable value to scholars of mathematics as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of education.
This book presents, in his own words, the life of Hugo Steinhaus (1887-1972), noted Polish mathematician of Jewish background, educator, and mathematical popularizer. A student of Hilbert, a pioneer of the foundations of probability and game theory, and a contributor to the development of functional analysis, he was one of those instrumental to the extraordinary flowering of Polish mathematics before and after World War I. In particular, it was he who "discovered" the great Stefan Banach. Exhibiting his great integrity and wit, Steinhaus's personal story of the turbulent times he survived - including two world wars and life postwar under the Soviet heel - cannot but be of consuming interest. His recounting of the fearful years spent evading Nazi terror is especially moving. The steadfast honesty and natural dignity he maintained while pursuing a life of demanding scientific and intellectual enquiry in the face of encroaching calamity and chaos show him to be truly a mathematician for all seasons. The present work will be of great interest not only to mathematicians wanting to learn some of the details of the mathematical blossoming that occurred in Poland in the first half of the 20th century, but also to anyone wishing to read a first-hand account of the history of those unquiet times in Europe - and indeed world-wide - by someone of uncommon intelligence and forthrightness situated near an eye of the storm.
This book explores facets of Otto Neugebauer's career, his impact on the history and practice of mathematics, and the ways in which his legacy has been preserved or transformed in recent decades, looking ahead to the directions in which the study of the history of science will head in the twenty-first century. Neugebauer, more than any other scholar of recent times, shaped the way we perceive premodern science. Through his scholarship and influence on students and collaborators, he inculcated both an approach to historical research on ancient and medieval mathematics and astronomy through precise mathematical and philological study of texts, and a vision of these sciences as systems of knowledge and method that spread outward from the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, crossing cultural boundaries and circulating over a tremendous geographical expanse of the Old World from the Atlantic to India.
This book provides an overview of the confluence of ideas in Turing's era and work and examines the impact of his work on mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. It combines contributions by well-known scientists on the history and philosophy of computability theory as well as on generalised Turing computability. By looking at the roots and at the philosophical and technical influence of Turing's work, it is possible to gather new perspectives and new research topics which might be considered as a continuation of Turing's working ideas well into the 21st century. The Stored-Program Universal Computer: Did Zuse Anticipate Turing and von Neumann?" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com
Originally published in 1926, this book was written to provide mathematical and scientific students with an introduction to the subject of integral calculus. The text was largely planned around the syllabus for the Higher Certificate Examination. A short historical survey is included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in integral calculus, mathematics and the history of education.
Originally published in 1948, this book was written to provide students with an accessible guide to various elements of mathematics. The text was created for individual working rather than group learning situations. Numerous exercises are included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in mathematics and the history of education.
First published in 1946, as the second edition of a 1932 original, this book was intended to provide students with a sound working knowledge of coordinate geometry. The text contains 'a full discussion of the subject up to conics referred to their axes, using both point equations and parametric methods wherever the latter are suitable'. Exercises and examples are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in coordinate geometry and the history of mathematics.
Originally published in 1936, this book was written with the intention of preparing candidates for the Higher Certificate Examinations. The text was created to bridge the gap between introductions to differential and integral calculus and advanced textbooks on the subject. This volume will be of value to anyone with an interest in differential and integral calculus, mathematics and the history of education.
Originally published in 1924, this book presents an account regarding the direct numerical calculation of elliptic functions and integrals. Notes are incorporated and an appendix section containing examples is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of mathematics.
Originally published in 1940, this book was aimed at students of science who had not previously been acquainted with algebra and the core mathematical principles. 'It is quite wrong that science students, particularly biology students, should go to their universities without having been made aware of even the existence of a side of mathematics whose importance is becoming more and more apparent'. The book caters for students who wish to develop their mathematical and reasoning skills, necessary to progress in the sciences. Chapters are broad in scope, detailed and varied; chapter titles include, 'The theory of quadratic equations', 'Probability' and 'Statistics'. A multitude of examples are included throughout to reinforce learning and answers can be found at the back. Providing an overview of algebra for school students before entering undergraduate science, this book will be of significant value to anyone with an interest in mathematics and the history of education.
In recent years, research on the history of early modern cartography has undergone remarkable developments. At the same time, European travel accounts and works on China and Japan are also being investigated more systematically. Finally, studies of translations between European and East Asian languages have highlighted the more general issue of how and to what extent representations of the world that prevailed at one end of Eurasia informed and influenced the representations prevailing at the other end of the continent, sometimes to the point that novel forms of representations were being generated.This volume brings together a series of essays on this theme. It is divided into five sections which address as many topics: the textual representation of the 'Other'; 16th- and 17th-century maps of China, Japan and Vietnam; the phenomenon of hybridisation in visual representations; knowledge and representations of the world in Europe and East Asia; and the circulation of representations of the heavens in astronomy between these two regions.
Medieval Islamic World: An Intellectual History of Science and Politics surveys major scientific and philosophical discoveries in the medieval period within the broader Islamicate world, providing an alternative historical framework to that of the primarily Eurocentric history of science and philosophy of science and technology fields. Medieval Islamic World serves to address the history of rationalist inquiry within scholarly institutions in medieval Islamic societies, surveying developments in the fields of medicine and political theory, and the scientific disciplines of astronomy, chemistry, physics, and mechanics, as led by medieval Muslim scholarship.
Originally published in 1936, this detailed textbook is a companion to the 1931 publication An Elementary Treatise on Actuarial Mathematics and is intended to provide further examples for learning, practice and revision; 'the inclusion of additional examples in the book as it stood was impracticable, and it appeared that the difficulty could only be overcome by the publication of a supplement to the book'. Contained is a vast selection of examples on finite differences, calculus and probability, in the hope 'that the supplement will prove of value to students, especially to those who have completed the course for the examination'. Notably, most questions purposely hint at solution and refrain from providing a full explanation - 'in only a few instances has the complete solution of the question been given'. This engaging book will be of great value to anyone with an interest in mathematics, science and the history of education.
Originally published in 1929, this book presents a guide to riders in geometry aimed at students of matriculation or School Certificate standard. The text is divided into three main sections: 'The straight line'; 'The circle'; 'General'. Exercises are included at the end of each section. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in geometry, mathematics and the history of education.
Originally published in 1946, this book was prepared by the Committee for the Calculation of Mathematical Tables. The text contains a series of tables of Legendre polynomials, created to meet the needs of researchers in various branches of mathematics and physics. The tables were largely designed by Leslie John Comrie (1893-1950), an astronomer who was integral to the development of mechanical computation. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Legendre polynomials and mathematical tables.
Originally published in 1946, this book was prepared on behalf of the Committee for the Calculation of Mathematical Tables. The text contains a series of tables with data relating to the Airy function. The tables were developed by Jeffrey Charles Percy Miller (1906-81), a British mathematician who was integral to the development of computing. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in differential equations and the history of mathematics.
This study of graded rings includes the first systematic account of the graded Grothendieck group, a powerful and crucial invariant in algebra which has recently been adopted to classify the Leavitt path algebras. The book begins with a concise introduction to the theory of graded rings and then focuses in more detail on Grothendieck groups, Morita theory, Picard groups and K-theory. The author extends known results in the ungraded case to the graded setting and gathers together important results which are currently scattered throughout the literature. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in ring theory.
Prime numbers are beautiful, mysterious, and beguiling mathematical objects. The mathematician Bernhard Riemann made a celebrated conjecture about primes in 1859, the so-called Riemann hypothesis, which remains one of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. Through the deep insights of the authors, this book introduces primes and explains the Riemann hypothesis. Students with a minimal mathematical background and scholars alike will enjoy this comprehensive discussion of primes. The first part of the book will inspire the curiosity of a general reader with an accessible explanation of the key ideas. The exposition of these ideas is generously illuminated by computational graphics that exhibit the key concepts and phenomena in enticing detail. Readers with more mathematical experience will then go deeper into the structure of primes and see how the Riemann hypothesis relates to Fourier analysis using the vocabulary of spectra. Readers with a strong mathematical background will be able to connect these ideas to historical formulations of the Riemann hypothesis.
Originally published in 1927, as the first of a two-part set, this informative and systematically organised textbook, primarily aimed at university students, contains a vectorial treatment of geometry, reasoning that by the use of such vector methods, geometry is able to be 'both simplified and condensed'. Chapters I-XI discuss the more elementary parts of the subject, whilst the remainder is devoted to an exploration of the more complex differential invariants for a surface and their applications. Chapter titles include, 'Curves with torsion', 'Geodesics and geodesic parallels' and 'Triply orthogonal systems of surfaces'. Diagrams are included to supplement the text. Providing a detailed overview of the subject and forming a solid foundation for study of multidimensional differential geometry and the tensor calculus, this book will prove an invaluable reference work to scholars of mathematics as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of education.
Originally published in 1911, this practical textbook of exercises was primarily aimed at school students and was intended to provide an accessible yet challenging 'informal course' on solid geometry for classwork, homework and revision. The book is divided into three principal sections: chapters 1-6 discuss the main properties of lines and planes, chapters 7-13 examine properties of the principal solid figures, including mensuration, whilst chapters 14-16 consider coordinates in three dimensions, plan, elevation and perspective, also known as descriptive geometry. The book covers key theorems, whilst cataloguing useful geometry questions focused on developing a broad understanding of the subject. Intended as educational rather than technical material and a practical, systematic supplement to school lessons, this book will be of great value to scholars of mathematics as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of education.
Originally published in 1916, this book was written to provide readers with a concise account of the leading properties of quartic surfaces possessing nodes or nodal curves. A brief summary of the leading results discussed in the book is included in the form of an introduction. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in quartic surfaces, algebraic geometry and the history of mathematics.
Originally published in 1938, this book provides a series of exercises in arithmetic intended to take pupils ten minutes to complete. The text was created to train pupils in speed and accuracy in the fundamentals of arithmetic, avoiding unnecessary written work. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in arithmetic, mathematics and the history of education.
The difficulty of solving the non-linear equations of motion for compressible fluids has caused the linear approximations to these equations to be used extensively in applications to aeronautics. Originally published in 1955, this book is the first permanent work devoted exclusively to the problems involved in this important and rapidly developing subject. The first part of the book gives the derivation and interpretation of the linear equations for steady motion, the solution of these equations and a discussion of the boundary conditions and aerodynamic forces. The remainder examines various specific boundary value problems and the methods, which have been developed for their solution. Vectorial notation is used extensively throughout and an elementary familiarity with the theory and practice of compressible fluid flow is required. This book will be of considerable value to scholars of physics and mathematics as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of education.
Originally published in 1934, this informative textbook was written by renowned mathematician and astronomer Duncan Sommerville (1879-1934). Primarily aimed at undergraduates, the book carefully starts from the very beginning of the subject, but also engages with concepts which are considered profoundly more specialist in the field of geometry. Following on from a renewed and flourishing interest in geometry at the time, this textbook was 'written more in accordance with the tendencies of the present', placing a different emphasis on the subject's cornerstone principles and illuminating new developments in the field. Chapters are detailed and contain material often required for examinations; topics covered include the Cartesian coordinate system and tangential equations. Well planned, with a scholarly treatment of the subject and capturing a unified knowledge of geometry, this book will be a considerably valuable source to scholars of mathematics as well as to anyone with an interest in the history of education. |
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