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Author: Ad Meskens
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3034606435
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
In this book the author presents a comprehensive study of Diophantos’ monumental work known as Arithmetika, a highly acclaimed and unique set of books within the known Greek mathematical corpus. Its author, Diophantos, is an enigmatic figure of whom we know virtually nothing. Starting with Egyptian, Babylonian and early Greek mathematics the author paints a picture of the sources the Arithmetika may have had. Life in Alexandria, where Diophantos lived, is described and, on the basis of the limited available evidence, his biography is outlined. Of Arithmetika’s 13 books only 6 survive in Greek. It was not until 1971 that these were complemented by the discovery of 4 other books in an Arab translation. This allows the author to describe the structure, the contents and the mathematics of the Arithmetika in detail. Furthermore it is shown that Diophantos had a remarkable skill to solve higher degree equations. In the second part, the author draws our attention to the survival of Diophantos’ work in both Arab and European mathematical cultures. Once Xylander’s critical 1575 edition reached its European public, the fame of the Arithmetika grew. It was studied, translated and modified by such authors as Bombelli, Stevin and Viète. It reached its pinnacle of fame in 1621 with the publication of Bachet’s translation into Latin. The marginal notes by Fermat in his copy of Diophantos, including his famous “Last Theorem”, were the starting point of a whole new research subject: the theory of numbers.
Author: Ad Meskens
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3034606435
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
In this book the author presents a comprehensive study of Diophantos’ monumental work known as Arithmetika, a highly acclaimed and unique set of books within the known Greek mathematical corpus. Its author, Diophantos, is an enigmatic figure of whom we know virtually nothing. Starting with Egyptian, Babylonian and early Greek mathematics the author paints a picture of the sources the Arithmetika may have had. Life in Alexandria, where Diophantos lived, is described and, on the basis of the limited available evidence, his biography is outlined. Of Arithmetika’s 13 books only 6 survive in Greek. It was not until 1971 that these were complemented by the discovery of 4 other books in an Arab translation. This allows the author to describe the structure, the contents and the mathematics of the Arithmetika in detail. Furthermore it is shown that Diophantos had a remarkable skill to solve higher degree equations. In the second part, the author draws our attention to the survival of Diophantos’ work in both Arab and European mathematical cultures. Once Xylander’s critical 1575 edition reached its European public, the fame of the Arithmetika grew. It was studied, translated and modified by such authors as Bombelli, Stevin and Viète. It reached its pinnacle of fame in 1621 with the publication of Bachet’s translation into Latin. The marginal notes by Fermat in his copy of Diophantos, including his famous “Last Theorem”, were the starting point of a whole new research subject: the theory of numbers.
Author: Jean Christianidis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351694979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 891
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Book Description
This volume offers an English translation of all ten extant books of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetica, along with a comprehensive conceptual, historical, and mathematical commentary. Before his work became the inspiration for the emerging field of number theory in the seventeenth century, Diophantus (ca. 3rd c. CE) was known primarily as an algebraist. This volume explains how his method of solving arithmetical problems agrees both conceptually and procedurally with the premodern algebra later practiced in Arabic, Latin, and European vernaculars, and how this algebra differs radically from the modern algebra initiated by François Viète and René Descartes. It also discusses other surviving traces of ancient Greek algebra and follows the influence of the Arithmetica in medieval Islam, Byzantium, and the European Renaissance down to the 1621 publication of Claude-Gaspard Bachet’s edition. After the English translation the book provides a problem-by-problem commentary explaining the solutions in a manner compatible with Diophantus’s mode of thought. The Arithmetica of Diophantus provides an invaluable resource for historians of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as those studying ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Byzantine, and Renaissance history. In addition, the volume is also suitable for mathematicians and mathematics educators.
Author: Carlo Cellucci
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030897311
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
This book offers an alternative to current philosophy of mathematics: heuristic philosophy of mathematics. In accordance with the heuristic approach, the philosophy of mathematics must concern itself with the making of mathematics and in particular with mathematical discovery. In the past century, mainstream philosophy of mathematics has claimed that the philosophy of mathematics cannot concern itself with the making of mathematics but only with finished mathematics, namely mathematics as presented in published works. On this basis, mainstream philosophy of mathematics has maintained that mathematics is theorem proving by the axiomatic method. This view has turned out to be untenable because of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which have shown that the view that mathematics is theorem proving by the axiomatic method does not account for a large number of basic features of mathematics. By using the heuristic approach, this book argues that mathematics is not theorem proving by the axiomatic method, but is rather problem solving by the analytic method. The author argues that this view can account for the main items of the mathematical process, those being: mathematical objects, demonstrations, definitions, diagrams, notations, explanations, applicability, beauty, and the role of mathematical knowledge.
Author: Dietmar Herrmann
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662664941
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
The volume contains a comprehensive and problem-oriented presentation of ancient Greek mathematics from Thales to Proklos Diadochos. Exemplarily, a cross-section of Greek mathematics is offered, whereby also such works of scientists are appreciated in detail, of which no German translation is available. Numerous illustrations and the inclusion of the cultural, political and literary environment provide a great spectrum of the history of mathematical science and a real treasure trove for those seeking biographical and contemporary background knowledge or suggestions for lessons or lectures. The presentation is up-to-date and realizes tendencies of recent historiography. In the new edition, the central chapters on Plato, Aristotle and Alexandria have been updated. The explanations of Greek calculus, mathematical geography and mathematics of the early Middle Ages have been expanded and show new points of view. A completely new addition is a unique illustrated account of Roman mathematics. Also newly included are several color illustrations that successfully illustrate the book's subject matter. With more than 280 images, this volume represents a richly illustrated history book on ancient mathematics.
Author: Morgan G. Ames
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197502423
Category : Algorithms
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
"The rhetoric of algorithmic neutrality is more alive than ever-why? This volume explores key moments in the historical emergence of algorithmic practices and in the constitution of their credibility and authority since 1500. If algorithms are historical objects and their associated meanings and values are situated and contingent-and if we are to push back against rhetorical claims of otherwise-then the genealogical investigation this book offers is essential to understand the power of the algorithm. The fact that algorithms create the conditions for many of our encounters with social reality contrasts starkly with their relative invisibility. More than other artifacts, algorithms are easily black-boxed. Rather than contingent and modifiable, they are widely seen as obvious and unproblematic-without context and without history. As an antidote, this volume keeps a clear focus on the emergence and continuous reconstitution of algorithmic practices alongside the ascendance of modernity. Its essays highlight the trajectory of an algorithmic modernity, one characterized by attitudes and practices that are best emblematized by the modernist aesthetic and inhuman efficacy of the algorithm. The volume moves from early modern algorithmic practices, centered on heuristics for arithmetic operations, emphasizing ruptures, shifts, and variations across times and cultures. By the age of Enlightenment, the term algorithm had come to signify any process of systematic calculation that could be carried out mechanically, but its meaning and implications are still distant from those familiar to us . It's in the nineteenth and twentieth century that the meaning of algorithm is sharpened through a new discipline and by adding sets of specific conditions-such as the condition of finiteness-which acquire new and crucial significance in the age of digital computing. Throughout, the connection between algorithms and modernity is one of our central concerns. Through detailed historical reconstructions of specific moments, thinkers, and cultural phenomena over the last five hundred years, these essays lead us to the definitions of algorithm most legible today and to the pervasiveness of both algorithmic procedures and rhetoric. This volume contributes a multi-faceted exploration of the genealogies of algorithms, of algorithmic thinking, and of the distinctly modernist faith in algorithms as neutral tools that merely illuminate the natural and social world"--
Author: Gert Schubring
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031176707
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
This book is about the creation and production of textbooks for learning and teaching mathematics. It covers a period from Antiquity to Modern Times. The analysis begins by assessing principal cultures with a practice of mathematics. The tension between the role of the teacher and his oral mode, on the one hand, and the use of a written (printed) text, in their respective relation with the student, is one of the dimensions of the comparative analysis, conceived of as the ‘textbook triangle’. The changes in this tension with the introduction of the printing press are discussed. The book presents various national case studies (France, Germany, Italy) as well as analyses of the internationalisation of textbooks via transmission processes. As this topic has not been sufficiently explored in the literature, it will be very well received by scholars of mathematics education, mathematics teacher educators and anyone with an interest in the field.
Author: Nathan Sidoli
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642367364
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 584
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Book Description
This book honors the career of historian of mathematics J.L. Berggren, his scholarship, and service to the broader community. The first part, of value to scholars, graduate students, and interested readers, is a survey of scholarship in the mathematical sciences in ancient Greece and medieval Islam. It consists of six articles (three by Berggren himself) covering research from the middle of the 20th century to the present. The remainder of the book contains studies by eminent scholars of the ancient and medieval mathematical sciences. They serve both as examples of the breadth of current approaches and topics, and as tributes to Berggren's interests by his friends and colleagues.
Author: Benjamin Wardhaugh
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691235767
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
A sweeping cultural history of one of the most influential mathematical books ever written Euclid's Elements of Geometry is one of the fountainheads of mathematics—and of culture. Written around 300 BCE, it has traveled widely across the centuries, generating countless new ideas and inspiring such figures as Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein. Encounters with Euclid tells the story of this incomparable mathematical masterpiece, taking readers from its origins in the ancient world to its continuing influence today. In this lively and informative book, Benjamin Wardhaugh explains how Euclid’s text journeyed from antiquity to the Renaissance, introducing some of the many readers, copyists, and editors who left their mark on the Elements before handing it on. He shows how some read the book as a work of philosophy, while others viewed it as a practical guide to life. He examines the many different contexts in which Euclid's book and his geometry were put to use, from the Neoplatonic school at Athens and the artisans' studios of medieval Baghdad to the Jesuit mission in China and the workshops of Restoration London. Wardhaugh shows how the Elements inspired ideas in theology, art, and music, and how the book has acquired new relevance to the strange geometries of dark matter and curved space. Encounters with Euclid traces the life and afterlives of one of the most remarkable works of mathematics ever written, revealing its lasting role in the timeless search for order and reason in an unruly world.
Author: Oliver Nicholson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192562460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1743
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Book Description
The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity is the first comprehensive reference book covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between the mid-3rd and the mid-8th centuries AD, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam. Consisting of over 1.5 million words in more than 5,000 A-Z entries, and written by more than 400 contributors, it is the long-awaited middle volume of a series, bridging a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. The scope of the Dictionary is broad and multi-disciplinary; across the wide geographical span covered (from Western Europe and the Mediterranean as far as the Near East and Central Asia), it provides succinct and pertinent information on political history, law, and administration; military history; religion and philosophy; education; social and economic history; material culture; art and architecture; science; literature; and many other areas. Drawing on the latest scholarship, and with a formidable international team of advisers and contributors, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to a period that is attracting increasing attention from scholars and students worldwide.
Author: Ad Meskens
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3319428632
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
In this book the classical Greek construction problems are explored in a didactical, enquiry based fashion using Interactive Geometry Software (IGS). The book traces the history of these problems, stating them in modern terminology. By focusing on constructions and the use of IGS the reader is confronted with the same problems that ancient mathematicians once faced. The reader can step into the footsteps of Euclid, Viète and Cusanus amongst others and then by experimenting and discovering geometric relationships far exceed their accomplishments. Exploring these problems with the neusis-method lets him discover a class of interesting curves. By experimenting he will gain a deeper understanding of how mathematics is created. More than 100 exercises guide him through methods which were developed to try and solve the problems. The exercises are at the level of undergraduate students and only require knowledge of elementary Euclidean geometry and pre-calculus algebra. It is especially well-suited for those students who are thinking of becoming a mathematics teacher and for mathematics teachers.
