Textual Studies in Ancient and Medieval Geometry

Textual Studies in Ancient and Medieval Geometry
Author: W.R. Knorr
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 850
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1461236908

For textual studies relating to the ancient mathematical corpus the efforts by the Danish philologist, 1. L. Heiberg (1854-1928), are especially significant. Beginning with his doctoral dissertation, Quaestiones Archimedeae (Copen hagen, 1879), Heiberg produced an astonishing series of editions and critical studies that remain the foundation of scholarship on Greek mathematical 4 science. For comprehensiveness and accuracy, his editions are exemplary. In his textual studies, as also in the prolegomena to his editions, he carefully described the extant evidence, organized the manuscripts into stemmata, and drew out the implications for the state of the text. 5 With regard to his Archimedean work, Heiberg sometimes betrayed signs of the philologist's occupational disease - the tendency to rewrite a text deemed on subjective grounds to be unworthy. 6 But he did so less often than his prominent 7 contemporaries, and not as to detract appreciably from the value of his editions. In examining textual questions bearing on the Archimedean corpus, he attempted to exploit as much as possible evidence from the ancient commentators, and in some instances from the medieval translations. It is here that opportunities abound for new work, extending, and in some instances superseding, Heiberg's findings. For at his time the availability of the medieval materials was limited. In recent years Marshall Clagett has completed a mammoth critical edition of the medieval Latin tradition of Archimedes,8 while the bibliographical instruments for the Arabic tradition are in good order thanks to the work of Fuat Sezgin.

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution

Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution
Author: Walter Roy Laird
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1402059671

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

Pi: A Source Book

Pi: A Source Book
Author: Jonathan M. Borwein
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 754
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475732406

Our intention in this collection is to provide, largely through original writings, an ex tended account of pi from the dawn of mathematical time to the present. The story of pi reflects the most seminal, the most serious, and sometimes the most whimsical aspects of mathematics. A surprising amount of the most important mathematics and a signifi cant number of the most important mathematicians have contributed to its unfolding directly or otherwise. Pi is one of the few mathematical concepts whose mention evokes a response of recog nition and interest in those not concerned professionally with the subject. It has been a part of human culture and the educated imagination for more than twenty-five hundred years. The computation of pi is virtually the only topic from the most ancient stratum of mathematics that is still of serious interest to modern mathematical research. To pursue this topic as it developed throughout the millennia is to follow a thread through the history of mathematics that winds through geometry, analysis and special functions, numerical analysis, algebra, and number theory. It offers a subject that provides mathe maticians with examples of many current mathematical techniques as weIl as a palpable sense of their historical development. Why a Source Book? Few books serve wider potential audiences than does a source book. To our knowledge, there is at present no easy access to the bulk of the material we have collected.

Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi's Musica Plana and Musica Speculativa

Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi's Musica Plana and Musica Speculativa
Author: Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2024-05-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252056159

Available in English for the first time, Prosdocimo's Tractatus plane musice (1412) and Tractatus musice speculative (1425) are exemplary texts for understanding the high sophistication of music theory in the early fifteenth century. Known for considering music as a science based on demonstrable mathematical principles, Prosdocimo praises Marchetto for his theory of plainchant but criticizes his influential Lucidarium for its heterodox mathematics. In dismissing Marchetto as a “mere performer,” Prosdocimo takes up matters as broad as the nature and definition of music and as precise as counterpoint, tuning, and ecclesiastical modes. The treatises also reveal much about Prosdocimo’s understanding of plainchant; his work with Euclid's Elementa; and his familiarity with the music theory of Boethius, Macrobius, and Johannes de Muris. A foremost authority on Italian music theory of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Jan Herlinger consults manuscripts from Bologna, Cremona, and Lucca in preparing these valuable first critical editions.

Pi: A Source Book

Pi: A Source Book
Author: J.L. Berggren
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 812
Release: 2014-01-13
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475742177

This book documents the history of pi from the dawn of mathematical time to the present. One of the beauties of the literature on pi is that it allows for the inclusion of very modern, yet accessible, mathematics. The articles on pi collected herein fall into various classes. First and foremost there is a selection from the mathematical and computational literature of four millennia. There is also a variety of historical studies on the cultural significance of the number. Additionally, there is a selection of pieces that are anecdotal, fanciful, or simply amusing. For this new edition, the authors have updated the original material while adding new material of historical and cultural interest. There is a substantial exposition of the recent history of the computation of digits of pi, a discussion of the normality of the distribution of the digits, and new translations of works by Viete and Huygen.

History of Science

History of Science
Author: Ernst Ludwig Wilhelm Maximilian Curtze
Publisher:
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1868
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN:

Writings on Physics and Philosophy

Writings on Physics and Philosophy
Author: Wolfgang Pauli
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3662029944

Like Bohr, Einstein and Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli was not only a Nobel laureate and one of the creators of modern physics, but also an eminent philosopher of modern science. This is the first book in English to include all his famous articles on physics and epistemology. They were actually translated during Pauli's lifetime by R. Schlapp and are now edited and annotated by Pauli's former assistant Ch. Enz. Pauli writes about the philosophical significance of complementarity, about space,time and causality, symmetry and the exclusion principle, but also about therole of the unconscious in modern science. His famous article on Kepler is included as well as many historical essays on Bohr, Ehrenfest,and Einstein as well as on the influence of the unconscious on scientific theories. The book addresses not only physicists, philosophers and historians of science, but also the general public.

Thabit ibn Qurra

Thabit ibn Qurra
Author: Roshdi Rashed
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 801
Release: 2009-12-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110220792

Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901) was one of history’s most original thinkers and displayed expertise in the most difficult disciplines of this time: geometry, number theory, and astronomy as well as ontology, physics, and metaphysics. Approximately a dozen of this shorter mathematical and philosophical writings are collected in this volume. Critically edited with accompanying commentary, these writings show how Thabit Ibn Qurra developed and reconceived the intellectual inheritance of ancient Greece in all areas of knowledge.