New Books

1931 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-124
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Mathematics ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Accuracy

The appearance of a history of mathematics in one volume will be greeted with satisfaction in view of the increasing need for such a work. Perhaps no subject associated with elementary mathematics, using elementary as referring to mathematics through college grade, has increased in interest during the past twenty-five years as has this one. Great strides have been taken in placing this history on a foundation of scientific accuracy through a use of primary sources. The two-volume work of the distinguished historian, Professor David Eugene Smith, has set a standard which should be sought by other writers. The stamp of his authority has been put on the work under review through an introduction to it.

Newton and the Origin of Civilization

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Civilizations ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
One Year ◽  
Radical Ideas

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Mathematics in Ancient China: From the newly discovered 數 Shu and 算數書 Suan Shu Shu Bamboo Texts to the Nine Chapters on the Art of Mathematics

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (37) ◽  
pp. 25-78
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Dauben
Keyword(s):  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Plenary Lecture ◽  
Ancient China ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Tsinghua University ◽  
Warring States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peking University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mathematical Texts

The history of ancient Chinese mathematics and its applications has been greatly stimulated in the past few decades by remarkable archaeological discoveries of texts from the pre-Qin and later periods that make it possible to study in detail mathematical material from the time at which it was written. By examining the recent Warring States, Qin and Han bamboo mathematical texts currently being conserved and studied at Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing, the Yuelu Academy in Changsha, and the Hubei Museum in Wuhan, it is possible to shed new light on the history of early mathematical thought and its applications in ancient China. Also discussed here are developments of new techniques and justifications given for the problems that were a significant part of the growing mathematical corpus, and which eventually culminated in the comprehensive Nine Chapters on the Art of Mathematics. What follows is a revised text of an invited plenary lecture given during the 10th National Seminar on the History of Mathematics at UNICAMP in Campinas, SP, Brazil, on March 27, 2013.

Beginnings

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-4
Author(s):  
Judith T. Sowder
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Mathematics Education ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Forthcoming Book ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Past Half

The beginning of a new year as well as the threshold of a new century and a new millennium seem appropriate times to take stock of where we have been and where we are going as a mathematics education research community. We have accomplished a great deal in the past half century of our existence, and I for one look forward to reading the forthcoming book on the history of mathematics education, edited by Jeremy Kilpatrick and George Stanic. That book will review for us our progress thus far, but what are the challenges we now face? This question will be addressed in various ways at various gatherings in the coming year, and new agendas will result from those discussions.

On the Applicability of Mathematics to Nature: Roger Bacon and his Predecessors

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Lindberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Applicability Of Mathematics ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Roger Bacon has often been victimized by his friends, who have exaggerated and distorted his place in the history of mathematics. He has too often been viewed as the first, or one of the first, to grasp the possibilities and promote the cause of modern mathematical physics. Even those who have noticed that Bacon was more given to the praise than to the practice of mathematics have seen in his programmatic statements an anticipation of seventeenth-century achievements. But if we judge Bacon by twentieth-century criteria and pronounce him an anticipator of modern science, we will fail totally to understand his true contributions; for Bacon was not looking to the future, but responding to the past; he was grappling with ancient traditions and attempting to apply the truth thus gained to the needs of thirteenth-century Christendom. If we wish to understand Bacon, therefore, we must take a backward, rather than a forward, look; we must view him in relation to his predecessors and contemporaries rather than his successors; we must consider not his influence, but his sources and the use to which he put them.

History of Mathematics. Vol. II. (Special Topics of Elementary Mathematics)

1925 ◽  
Vol 12 (177) ◽  
pp. 446
Author(s):  
E. M. Langley ◽  
David Eugene Smith
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Mathematics ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
History Of

The Church of Ireland: a critical bibliography, 1536–1992 Part III: 1641–90

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 358-362
Author(s):  
J.I. McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The history of the Church of Ireland between 1641 and 1690 has not excited much interest among historians over the past thirty years. It was not always so, and earlier generations of writers found more to describe or investigate in a period which saw effective disestablishment in the 1650s, restoration in the 1660s, and crisis in the later 1680s. Phillips devoted almost one hundred pages to these years: the 1640s and 1650s in the authoritative hands of St John D. Seymour, and the 1660s to 1680s (and beyond) covered by R. H. Murray. Mant’s History, published almost a century before Phillips, still provides a useful narrative and valuable quotations from primary sources. The much shorter treatment of J. T. Ball, first published in 1886, gave only 33 pages out of 305 to the period, but contained some perceptive comments. In other histories of the Church of Ireland the period receives more cursory treatment.

Back to the future – a journey from current education reforms to reformations in the past

2020 ◽  
pp. 275-288
Author(s):  
Yvette Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Education Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
The University ◽  
Point Of Departure

Learning from history does not automatically mean that history prevents us from repeating mistakes. We cannot see what happens in the future, even with the most profound knowledge of the past. Although it is not possible to make such causal connections, the study of structural components, which recur and make up patterns, can certainly contribute to sharpening political judgement. How can the teaching of the history of mathematics education then help to support an understanding of possible courses of individual actions without indoctrination through the political or even ideologically influenced production of time references? The paper presents the concept of a lecture course in mathematics education, held at the University of Mainz. We take as a point of departure the everyday experience of our prospective mathematics teacher with various current education reforms and present seemingly similar processes during former reforms. Here we limit ourselves to reforms during the 19th and 20th century.

Seen, Said, or Deduced? Travel Accounts, Historical Criticism, and Discourse Theory: Towards an “Archeology” of Dialogue in Seventeenth-Century Guinea

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gérard Chouin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Exploratory Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dual Perspective ◽  
Professional Writers ◽  
Travel Accounts

Puisqu'il n'existe pas de mots qui ne soient à personne(Bakhtin 1979 in Todorov 1981: 83)Le discours, c'est-à-dire le langage dans sa totalité concrète et vivante.(Bakhtin 1963 in Todorov 1981: 44)European travel accounts are widely used as sources to write the history of societies that did not themselves produce a large amount of textual documentation. On the Coast of Guinea, and more particularly on the area formerly known as Gold Coast (approximately the littoral of modern Ghana), many of the written documents providing historians with information on coastal societies prior to nineteenth century were produced by Europeans travelers. Most of these individuals were merchants, craftsmen, pastors or soldiers who had settled several years in the numerous forts and trading posts erected along the seashore to protect and enhance the trade of chartered companies. Others were seamen and merchants who only spent a few weeks at a stretch plying the African Coast aboard men-of-war or trading ships, exchanging manufactured goods for gold, slaves, and ivory. Professional writers, who had not traveled to Africa, but had obtained data from various written sources or from travelers, also composed some of the accounts. Therefore, these documents show an extraordinary diversity in form and content, which historians and archeologists need to investigate before using them as primary sources for reconstructing the past.In the first part of the present paper, which focuses on a specific genre, the seventeenth-century travel accounts, I recall the historiography of the recent critique of these sources. I also point out that despite decisive methodological breakthroughs, some heuristic dimensions or attributes of these texts are yet to be recognized and assessed. I then re-examine these sources from the dual perspective of historic and linguistic anthropological methods and introduce an exploratory approach centered on the Bakhtinian approach to discourse.

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