British Versions of Book II of Euclid's Elements: Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra (1550-1750)

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-031-11537-0
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 74 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 158 g

Reihe: SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology

This book discusses the changing conceptions about the relationship between geometry and arithmetic within the Euclidean tradition that developed in the British context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Its focus is on Book II of the Elements and the ways in which algebraic symbolism and methods, especially as recently introduced by François Viète and his followers, took center stage as mediators between the two realms, and thus offered new avenues to work out that relationship in idiosyncratic ways not found in earlier editions of the Euclidean text.

Texts examined include Robert Recorde's Pathway to Knowledge (1551), Henry Billingsley’s first English translation of the Elements (1570), Clavis Mathematicae by William Oughtred and Artis Analyticae Praxis by Thomas Harriot (both published in 1631), Isaac Barrow’s versions of the Elements (1660), and John Wallis Treatise of Algebra (1685), and the English translations of Claude Dechales’ French Euclidean Elements (1685).

This book offers a completely new perspective of the topic and analyzes mostly unexplored material. It will be of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians with an interest in history and historians of renaissance science in general.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Corry, Leo

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Geometrie Algebraische Geometrie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtswissenschaft: Theorie und Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophische Logik, Argumentationstheorie
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Technische Informatik Hardware: Grundlagen und Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Euclidean Background1.1 Book II1.2 The early printed version of the Elements1.3 The rise of Viète’s symbolic algebra
2. The Main Figures: From Recorde to Wallis and Barrow2.1 Robert Recorde2.2 Billingsley and Rudd2.3 Oughtred and Harriot2.4 Wallis and Barrow
3. Some Lesser-known Figures3.1 Leeke and Serle3.2 Dechales translated into English3.3 Alingham3.4 Henry Hill3.5 Turn of the eighteenth century
4. Summary and Concluding RemarksAcknowledgments
5. References

Über Autor(innen)

Leo Corry is a historian of science working at Tel Aviv University. He has published extensively on the history of mathematics, physics and computing, since the turn of the twentieth century, as well as on medieval mathematics. 

He has published two books in the SpringerBriefs Series, as well as one book with Kluwer, one with Birhauser, one with Oxford UP. He also has a very long list of published articles and book chapters.

He was editor of Science in Cintext (published at Cambridge UP).