This seminal collection gathers together many general writings of one of the world's leading historians of mathematics. Organized thematically, these essays ponder the intellectual underpinnings of the field, examine the major topics in the history of mathematics, and recount the bizarre history of pseudomath. Ivor Grattan-Guinness explores how people understand mathematics-the routes of learning they take as they make important discoveries and study mathematical concepts and theories. The essays in the first part of the book discuss the history of mathematics as a field and its central philosophical issues. Those in the next part address the history of mathematics education and its importance to current modes of teaching. In the last section Grattan-Guinness investigates various understudied aspects of math, including numerology, Masonic symbols in classical music, and the links between mathematics and Christianity. This collection includes several essays that are difficult to find anywhere else. All historians of mathematics and students of the field will want a copy of this remarkable resource on their bookshelves.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Here, Grattan-Guinness, one of the world's leading mathematics historians, has written the seminal how-to-book for the history of mathematics... This reviewer found the book hard to put down. Choice 2010 In spite of the great variation in themes, the book is quite coherent and gives anyone dealing with the history of mathematics food for thought. -- Teun Koetsier History and Philosophy of Logic 2010
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
29 s/w Zeichnungen
29 Line drawings, black and white
Maße
Höhe: 227 mm
Breite: 151 mm
Dicke: 27 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-8018-9248-6 (9780801892486)
DOI
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Ivor Grattan-Guinness is a professor emeritus of the history of mathematics and logic at Middlesex University. He is author of Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840: From the Calculus and Mechanics to Mathematical Analysis and Mathematical Physics and editor of the Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, also published by Johns Hopkins.
Autor*in
43, St. Leonard's Road
Preface
1. Searching for Reasons: My Way In and Onward
Part I: Highways in the History of Mathematics
2. The Mathematics of the Past: Distinguishing Its History from Our Heritage
3. Decline, Then Recovery: An Overview of Activity in the History of Mathematics during the Twentieth Century
4. On Certain Somewhat Neglected Features of the History of Mathematics
5. General Histories of Mathematics? Of Use? To Whom?
6. Too Mathematical for Historians, Too Historicalfor Mathematicians
7. History of Science Journals: "To Be Useful, and to the Living"?
8. Scientific Revolutions as Convolutions? A Skeptical Inquiry
Part 2: Pathways in Mathematics Education
9. On the Relevance of the History of Mathematics to Mathematical Education
10. Achilles Is Still Running
11. Numbers, Magnitudes, Ratios, and Proportions in Euclid's Elements: How Did He Handle Them?
12. Some Neglected Niches in the Understanding and Teaching of Numbers and Number Systems
13. What Was and What Should Be the Calculus?
Part 3: Byways in Mathematics and its Culture
14. Manifestations of Mathematics in and around the Christianities: Some Examples and Issues
15. Christianity and Mathematics: Kinds of Links, and the Rare Occurrences after 1750
16. Mozart 18, Beethoven 32: Hidden Shadows of Integers in Classical Music
17. Lagrange and Mozart as Critics of Descartes
Part 4: Lollipops
18. Four Pretty but Little-Known Theorems Involving the Triangle
Index
