Editors:
- The first exhaustive study on the indivisibles
- A mathematical, historical and philosophical approach of the intrusion and use of infinity in geometry during the XVIIth century
- Written by a team of well known scholars, after long common work and discussions
- Explains in what sense we can think about infinite, atom, continuity, indivisible in mathematics
Part of the book series: Science Networks. Historical Studies (SNHS, volume 49)
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Table of contents (20 chapters)
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Front Matter
About this book
The tremendous success of indivisibles methods in geometry in the seventeenth century, responds to a vast project: installation of infinity in mathematics. The pathways by the authors are very diverse, as are the characterizations of indivisibles, but there are significant factors of unity between the various doctrines of indivisible; the permanence of the language used by all authors is the strongest sign.
These efforts do not lead to the stabilization of a mathematical theory (with principles or axioms, theorems respecting these first statements, followed by applications to a set of geometric situations), one must nevertheless admire the magnitude of the results obtained by these methods and highlights the rich relationships between them and integral calculus.
The present book aims to be exhaustive since it analyzes the works of all major inventors of methods of indivisibles during the seventeenth century, from Kepler to Leibniz. It takes into account the rich existingliterature usually devoted to a single author. This book results from the joint work of a team of specialists able to browse through this entire important episode in the history of mathematics and to comment it.
The list of authors involved in indivisibles´ field is probably sufficient to realize the richness of this attempt; one meets Kepler, Cavalieri, Galileo, Torricelli, Gregoire de Saint Vincent, Descartes, Roberval, Pascal, Tacquet, Lalouvère, Guldin, Barrow, Mengoli, Wallis, Leibniz, Newton.
Reviews
“This book, which contains contributions by twelve historians of mathematics, provides a fascinating insight into the background and the rise of new ways of handling indivisibles in the 17th century. … The editor, Vincent Jullien, has given the book a unity that is praiseworthy and (almost) indivisible.” (William R. Shea, Mathematical Reviews, May, 2016)
Editors and Affiliations
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Département de Philosophie, Université de Nantes, Nantes, France
Vincent Jullien
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Seventeenth-Century Indivisibles Revisited
Editors: Vincent Jullien
Series Title: Science Networks. Historical Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00131-9
Publisher: Birkhäuser Cham
eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-00130-2Published: 02 June 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-37495-6Published: 17 October 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-00131-9Published: 19 May 2015
Series ISSN: 1421-6329
Series E-ISSN: 2296-6080
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 499
Number of Illustrations: 161 b/w illustrations, 70 illustrations in colour
Topics: History of Mathematical Sciences