For Dirk Struik

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XXVII

   PDF

2. Mathematics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. The Lemniscate of Bernoulli

      • H. J. M. Bos

      Pages 3-14

   3. Summation of Series of Fractions Depending Upon the Roots of the Airy Function

      • J. M. Burgers

      Pages 15-19

   4. Wave Propagation in Non-Viscous Fluids

      • N. Coburn

      Pages 21-24

   5. Polyhedral Numbers

      • H. S. M. Coxeter

      Pages 25-35

   6. Materialist Mathematics

      • Chandler Davis

      Pages 37-66

   7. Skew Curves Setting Up a Null System in Space

      • Howard Eves

      Pages 67-74

   8. Über Ein Beispiel zur Unbestimmten Analytik und Seine Allgemeine Bedeutung

      • J. E. Hofmann

      Pages 75-89

   9. Remarks on Two-By-Two Matric Semigroups

      • Thomas Mulcrone

      Pages 91-99

   10. A Unified Approach to Hypernumbers

       • Domina Eberle Spencer, Parry Moon

       Pages 101-119

   11. Some Remarks on the Concept of Limit

       • Ruth Rebekka Struik

       Pages 121-129

   12. La Notion de Fonction Chez Condorcet

       • A. P. Youschkevitch

       Pages 131-139

3. History of Mathematics and Science

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141

      PDF

   2. The Modern Use of Historical Chinese Solar Observations

      • J. Roger Bray

      Pages 143-146

   3. The Second Part of Chapter 5 of the De Arte Mensurandi by Johannes De Muris

      • H. L. L. Busard

      Pages 147-167

   4. Isaac Newton, The Calculus of Variations, and the Design of Ships

      • I. Bernard Cohen

      Pages 169-187

   5. The Impact of Von Staudt’s Foundations of Geometry

      • Hans Freudenthal

      Pages 189-200

   6. Georg Samuel Dörffel

      • C. Doris Hellman

      Pages 201-203

   7. Observational, Rational and Scientific Medicine in Mexico

      • J. J. Izquierdo

      Pages 205-211

It is fitting that Professor Dirk Jan Struik be greeted with this melange of mathematical, scientific, historical, sociological and political essays. The authors are also appropriately varied: different countries, outlooks, religions, generations, and we suppose - of course we did not as- different politics too. Many more would have joined us, we know, but the good friends in this book make a fine and representative assembly of the intersection of two (mathematical!) classes: affectionately respect­ ful admirers of Dirk Struik, and the best thinkers of this troubled century. Struik has been among the most steadfast supporters of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, that discussion group which we have been holding at Boston University since 1960, but his luminous collaboration has been welcome, in Boston and Cambridge, for nearly five decades among mathematicians, physicists, philosophical and political thinkers, and especially among the students. It has not mattered whether they have been his own students or not, whether at M.LT. or elsewhere, whether scholars or dropouts, nature-lovers or book worms, anarchists or Republicans, Catholics or Unitarians, Communists or communists, prim or liberated. No doubt he has his preferences! But the main thing for Struik has been to educate and respect the other person.

• education
• falsification
• history of science
• scientific practice
• scientific revolution

• Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, USA

  Robert S. Cohen, John J. Stachel, Marx W. Wartofsky

Policies and ethics