Infinitesimal : : how a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World
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Part I. The war against disorder: the Jesuits against the infinitely small. 1. The children of Ignatius ; 2. Mathematical order ; 3. Mathematical disorder ; 4. "Destroy or be destroyed": the war on the infinitely small ; 5. The battle of the mathematicians -- Part II. Leviathan and the infinitesimal. 6. The coming of Leviathan ; 7. Thomas Hobbes, geometer ; 8. Who was John Wallis? ; 9. Mathematics for a new world -- Epilogue: two modernities.
Explores "the epic battle over a mathematical concept that shook the old order and shaped the world as we know it. On August 10, 1632, five leaders of the Society of Jesus convened in a somber Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a simple idea: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and limitlessly tiny parts. The doctrine would become the foundation of calculus, but on that fateful day the judges ruled that it was forbidden. With the stroke of a pen they set off a war for the soul of the modern world"-- Provided by publisher.
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PUBLISHED
New York : Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Year Published: 2014
Description: 352 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Language: English
Format: Book
ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780374176815
0374176817
SUBJECTS
Calculus -- History.
Geometry, Infinitesimal -- History.
Mathematics -- Europe -- History -- 16th century.
Mathematics -- Europe -- History -- 17th century.
Science, Renaissance.