The Continuous, the Discrete and the Infinitesimal in Philosophy and Mathematics

The Continuous, the Discrete and the Infinitesimal in Philosophy and Mathematics
Author: John L. Bell
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-09-09
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030187071

This book explores and articulates the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal from two points of view: the philosophical and the mathematical. The first section covers the history of these ideas in philosophy. Chapter one, entitled ‘The continuous and the discrete in Ancient Greece, the Orient and the European Middle Ages,’ reviews the work of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and other Ancient Greeks; the elements of early Chinese, Indian and Islamic thought; and early Europeans including Henry of Harclay, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Thomas Bradwardine and Nicolas Oreme. The second chapter of the book covers European thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Arnauld, Fermat, and more. Chapter three, 'The age of continuity,’ discusses eighteenth century mathematicians including Euler and Carnot, and philosophers, among them Hume, Kant and Hegel. Examining the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fourth chapter describes the reduction of the continuous to the discrete, citing the contributions of Bolzano, Cauchy and Reimann. Part one of the book concludes with a chapter on divergent conceptions of the continuum, with the work of nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophers and mathematicians, including Veronese, Poincaré, Brouwer, and Weyl. Part two of this book covers contemporary mathematics, discussing topology and manifolds, categories, and functors, Grothendieck topologies, sheaves, and elementary topoi. Among the theories presented in detail are non-standard analysis, constructive and intuitionist analysis, and smooth infinitesimal analysis/synthetic differential geometry. No other book so thoroughly covers the history and development of the concepts of the continuous and the infinitesimal.

A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis

A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis
Author: John L. Bell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 7
Release: 2008-04-07
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0521887186

A rigorous, axiomatically formulated presentation of the 'zero-square', or 'nilpotent' infinitesimal.

Infinitesimal

Infinitesimal
Author: Amir Alexander
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2014-07-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1780745338

On August 10, 1632, five leading Jesuits convened in a sombre 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. Amir Alexander takes us from the bloody religious strife of the sixteenth century to the battlefields of the English civil war and the fierce confrontations between leading thinkers like Galileo and Hobbes. The legitimacy of popes and kings, as well as our modern beliefs in human liberty and progressive science, hung in the balance; the answer hinged on the infinitesimal. Pulsing with drama and excitement, Infinitesimal will forever change the way you look at a simple line.

Real Analysis Through Modern Infinitesimals

Real Analysis Through Modern Infinitesimals
Author: Nader Vakil
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1107002028

A coherent, self-contained treatment of the central topics of real analysis employing modern infinitesimals.

G.W. Leibniz, Interrelations between Mathematics and Philosophy

G.W. Leibniz, Interrelations between Mathematics and Philosophy
Author: Norma B. Goethe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2015-04-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401796645

Up to now there have been scarcely any publications on Leibniz dedicated to investigating the interrelations between philosophy and mathematics in his thought. In part this is due to the previously restricted textual basis of editions such as those produced by Gerhardt. Through recent volumes of the scientific letters and mathematical papers series of the Academy Edition scholars have obtained a much richer textual basis on which to conduct their studies - material which allows readers to see interconnections between his philosophical and mathematical ideas which have not previously been manifested. The present book draws extensively from this recently published material. The contributors are among the best in their fields. Their commissioned papers cover thematically salient aspects of the various ways in which philosophy and mathematics informed each other in Leibniz's thought.

Deleuze and the History of Mathematics

Deleuze and the History of Mathematics
Author: Simon Duffy
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-05-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441113894

Gilles Deleuze's engagements with mathematics, replete in his work, rely upon the construction of alternative lineages in the history of mathematics, which challenge some of the self imposed limits that regulate the canonical concepts of the discipline. For Deleuze, these challenges provide an opportunity to reconfigure particular philosophical problems - for example, the problem of individuation - and to develop new concepts in response to them. The highly original research presented in this book explores the mathematical construction of Deleuze's philosophy, as well as addressing the undervalued and often neglected question of the mathematical thinkers who influenced his work. In the wake of Alain Badiou's recent and seemingly devastating attack on the way the relation between mathematics and philosophy is configured in Deleuze's work, Simon B.Duffy offers a robust defence of the structure of Deleuze's philosophy and, in particular, the adequacy of the mathematical problems used in its construction. By reconciling Badiou and Deleuze's seemingly incompatible engagements with mathematics, Duffy succeeds in presenting a solid foundation for Deleuze's philosophy, rebuffing the recent challenges against it.

Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method

Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method
Author: Niccolò Guicciardini
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2009
Genre: Mathematical analysis
ISBN: 0262013177

An analysis of Newton's mathematical work, from early discoveries to mature reflections, and a discussion of Newton's views on the role and nature of mathematics.

The Principles of Mathematics

The Principles of Mathematics
Author: Bertrand Russell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 580
Release: 1996
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780393314045

Russell's classic The Principles of Mathematics sets forth his landmark thesis that mathematics and logic are identical--that what is commonly called mathematics is simply later deductions from logical premises.