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Author: Volker R. Remmert
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3319396498
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
This book addresses the historiography of mathematics as it was practiced during the 19th and 20th centuries by paying special attention to the cultural contexts in which the history of mathematics was written. In the 19th century, the history of mathematics was recorded by a diverse range of people trained in various fields and driven by different motivations and aims. These backgrounds often shaped not only their writing on the history of mathematics, but, in some instances, were also influential in their subsequent reception. During the period from roughly 1880-1940, mathematics modernized in important ways, with regard to its content, its conditions for cultivation, and its identity; and the writing of the history of mathematics played into the last part in particular. Parallel to the modernization of mathematics, the history of mathematics gradually evolved into a field of research with its own journals, societies and academic positions. Reflecting both a new professional identity and changes in its primary audience, various shifts of perspective in the way the history of mathematics was and is written can still be observed to this day. Initially concentrating on major internal, universal developments in certain sub-disciplines of mathematics, the field gradually gravitated towards a focus on contexts of knowledge production involving individuals, local practices, problems, communities, and networks. The goal of this book is to link these disciplinary and methodological changes in the history of mathematics to the broader cultural contexts of its practitioners, namely the historians of mathematics during the period in question.
Author: Volker R. Remmert
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3319396498
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book addresses the historiography of mathematics as it was practiced during the 19th and 20th centuries by paying special attention to the cultural contexts in which the history of mathematics was written. In the 19th century, the history of mathematics was recorded by a diverse range of people trained in various fields and driven by different motivations and aims. These backgrounds often shaped not only their writing on the history of mathematics, but, in some instances, were also influential in their subsequent reception. During the period from roughly 1880-1940, mathematics modernized in important ways, with regard to its content, its conditions for cultivation, and its identity; and the writing of the history of mathematics played into the last part in particular. Parallel to the modernization of mathematics, the history of mathematics gradually evolved into a field of research with its own journals, societies and academic positions. Reflecting both a new professional identity and changes in its primary audience, various shifts of perspective in the way the history of mathematics was and is written can still be observed to this day. Initially concentrating on major internal, universal developments in certain sub-disciplines of mathematics, the field gradually gravitated towards a focus on contexts of knowledge production involving individuals, local practices, problems, communities, and networks. The goal of this book is to link these disciplinary and methodological changes in the history of mathematics to the broader cultural contexts of its practitioners, namely the historians of mathematics during the period in question.
Author: Mehrtens
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468494910
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
During the last few decades historians of science have shown a growing interest in science as a cultural activity and have regarded science more and more as part of the gene ral developments that have occurred in society. This trend has been less evident arnong historians of mathematics, who traditionally concentrate primarily on tracing the develop ment of mathematical knowledge itself. To some degree this restriction is connected with the special role of mathematics compared with the other sciences; mathematics typifies the most objective, most coercive type of knowledge, and there fore seems to be least affected by social influences. Nevertheless, biography, institutional history and his tory of national developments have long been elements in the historiography of mathematics. This interest in the social aspects of mathematics has widened recently through the stu dy of other themes, such as the relation of mathematics to the development of the educational system. Some scholars have begun to apply the methods of historical sociology of knowledge to mathematics; others have attempted to give a ix x Marxist analysis of the connection between mathematics and productive forces, and there have been philosophical studies about the communication processes involved in the production of mathematical knowledge. An interest in causal analyses of historical processes has led to the study of other factors influencing the development of mathematics, such as the f- mation of mathematical schools, the changes in the profes- onal situation of the mathematician and the general cultural milieu of the mathematical scientist.
Author: Félix Klein
Publisher: Math Science Press
ISBN: 9780915692286
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 630
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Book Description
Author: A.D.D. Craik
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 184628791X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
A few years ago, in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, I came across a remarkable but then little-known album of pencil and watercolour portraits. The artist of most (perhaps all) was Thomas Charles Wageman. Created during 1829–1852, these portraits are of pupils of the famous mat- matical tutor William Hopkins. Though I knew much about several of the subjects, the names of others were then unknown to me. I was prompted to discover more about them all, and gradually this interest evolved into the present book. The project has expanded naturally to describe the Cambridge educational milieu of the time, the work of William Hopkins, and the later achievements of his pupils and their contemporaries. As I have taught applied mathematics in a British university for forty years, during a time of rapid change, the struggles to implement and to resist reform in mid-nineteenth-century Cambridge struck a chord of recognition. So, too, did debates about academic standards of honours degrees. And my own experiences, as a graduate of a Scottish university who proceeded to C- bridge for postgraduate work, gave me a particular interest in those Scots and Irish students who did much the same more than a hundred years earlier. As a mathematician, I sometimes felt frustrated at having to suppress virtually all of the ? ne mathematics associated with this period: but to have included such technical material would have made this a very different book.
Author: Daniel J. Cohen
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801891868
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
This illuminating history explores the complex relationship between mathematics, religious belief, and Victorian culture. Throughout history, application rather than abstraction has been the prominent driving force in mathematics. From the compass and sextant to partial differential equations, mathematical advances were spurred by the desire for better navigation tools, weaponry, and construction methods. But the religious upheaval in Victorian England and the fledgling United States opened the way for the rediscovery of pure mathematics, a tradition rooted in Ancient Greece. In Equations from God, Daniel J. Cohen captures the origins of the rebirth of abstract mathematics in the intellectual quest to rise above common existence and touch the mind of the deity. Using an array of published and private sources, Cohen shows how philosophers and mathematicians seized upon the beautiful simplicity inherent in mathematical laws to reconnect with the divine and traces the route by which the divinely inspired mathematics of the Victorian era begot later secular philosophies.
Author: Jeremy Gray
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0857290606
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Based on the latest historical research, Worlds Out of Nothing is the first book to provide a course on the history of geometry in the 19th century. Topics covered in the first part of the book are projective geometry, especially the concept of duality, and non-Euclidean geometry. The book then moves on to the study of the singular points of algebraic curves (Plücker’s equations) and their role in resolving a paradox in the theory of duality; to Riemann’s work on differential geometry; and to Beltrami’s role in successfully establishing non-Euclidean geometry as a rigorous mathematical subject. The final part of the book considers how projective geometry rose to prominence, and looks at Poincaré’s ideas about non-Euclidean geometry and their physical and philosophical significance. Three chapters are devoted to writing and assessing work in the history of mathematics, with examples of sample questions in the subject, advice on how to write essays, and comments on what instructors should be looking for.
Author: Raymond Flood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199601399
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
With a foreword by Adam Hart-Davis, this book constitutes perhaps the first general survey of the mathematics of the Victorian period. It charts the institutional development of mathematics as a profession, as well as exploring the numerous innovations made during this time, many of which are still familiar today.
Author: H. H. Goldstine
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461381061
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
The calculus of variations is a subject whose beginning can be precisely dated. It might be said to begin at the moment that Euler coined the name calculus of variations but this is, of course, not the true moment of inception of the subject. It would not have been unreasonable if I had gone back to the set of isoperimetric problems considered by Greek mathemati cians such as Zenodorus (c. 200 B. C. ) and preserved by Pappus (c. 300 A. D. ). I have not done this since these problems were solved by geometric means. Instead I have arbitrarily chosen to begin with Fermat's elegant principle of least time. He used this principle in 1662 to show how a light ray was refracted at the interface between two optical media of different densities. This analysis of Fermat seems to me especially appropriate as a starting point: He used the methods of the calculus to minimize the time of passage cif a light ray through the two media, and his method was adapted by John Bernoulli to solve the brachystochrone problem. There have been several other histories of the subject, but they are now hopelessly archaic. One by Robert Woodhouse appeared in 1810 and another by Isaac Todhunter in 1861.
Author: Joseph Mazur
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400850118
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
An entertaining look at the origins of mathematical symbols While all of us regularly use basic math symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve into what we know today? In Enlightening Symbols, popular math writer Joseph Mazur explains the fascinating history behind the development of our mathematical notation system. He shows how symbols were used initially, how one symbol replaced another over time, and how written math was conveyed before and after symbols became widely adopted. Traversing mathematical history and the foundations of numerals in different cultures, Mazur looks at how historians have disagreed over the origins of the numerical system for the past two centuries. He follows the transfigurations of algebra from a rhetorical style to a symbolic one, demonstrating that most algebra before the sixteenth century was written in prose or in verse employing the written names of numerals. Mazur also investigates the subconscious and psychological effects that mathematical symbols have had on mathematical thought, moods, meaning, communication, and comprehension. He considers how these symbols influence us (through similarity, association, identity, resemblance, and repeated imagery), how they lead to new ideas by subconscious associations, how they make connections between experience and the unknown, and how they contribute to the communication of basic mathematics. From words to abbreviations to symbols, this book shows how math evolved to the familiar forms we use today.
Author: Jeremy Gray
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319237152
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
This book contains a history of real and complex analysis in the nineteenth century, from the work of Lagrange and Fourier to the origins of set theory and the modern foundations of analysis. It studies the works of many contributors including Gauss, Cauchy, Riemann, and Weierstrass. This book is unique owing to the treatment of real and complex analysis as overlapping, inter-related subjects, in keeping with how they were seen at the time. It is suitable as a course in the history of mathematics for students who have studied an introductory course in analysis, and will enrich any course in undergraduate real or complex analysis.
