Mathematics And the Historian's Craft

by Van Brummelen, Glen; Kinyon, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780387252841
• ISBN10: 0387252843
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

This book brings together for the first time the Kenneth May Lectures that were given at the annual meetings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics. All contributions are of high scholarly value, yet accessible to an audience with a wide range of interests. They provide a historian's perspective on mathematical developments and deal with a variety of topics covering Greek applied mathematics, the mathematics and science of Leonhard Euler, mathematical modeling and phenomena in ancient astronomy, Turing and the origins of artificial intelligence to name only a few.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Birth and Growth of a Community	3	(4)
Amy Shell-Gellasch
History or Heritage? An Important Distinction in Mathematics and for Mathematics Education	7	(16)
Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Ptolemy's Mathematical Models and their Meaning	23	(20)
Alexander Jones
Mathematics, Instruments and Navigation, 1600-1800	43	(14)
Jim Bennett
Was Newton's Calculus a Dead End? The Continental Influence of Maclaurin's Treatise of Fluxions	57	(24)
Judith V. Grabiner
The Mathematics and Science of Leonhard Euler (1707--1783)	81	(60)
Rudiger Thiele
Mathematics in Canada before 1945: A Preliminary Survey	141	(42)
Thomas Archibald
Louis Charbonneau
The Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community	183	(20)
Karen Hunger Parshall
19th Century Logic Between Philosophy and Mathematics	203	(18)
Volker Peckhaus
The Battle for Cantorian Set Theory	221	(22)
Joseph W. Dauben
Hilbert and his Twenty-Four Problems	243	(54)
Rudiger Thiele
Turing and the Origins of AI	297	(32)
Stuart Shanker
Mathematics and Gender: Some Cross-Cultural Observations	329	(18)
Ann Hibner Koblitz
Index	347