Brief History of Analysis

“This book is about basic concepts in mathematics, mainly in the field of the definition of number and its relation to analysis. It provides historical facts and discusses their connections with the transformations in what we call today analysis. The style of the book is, I would say, almost journalistic … . The author makes extensive use of italics, framed boxes, inverted commas, exclamation marks and other stylistic devices to attract the attention of the reader … .” (Pelegrí Viader, Mathematical Reviews, February, 2024)

• The Invention of the Mathematical Formula.- Numbers, Distances, Points, but No Crooked Lines.- Lines and Variables.- Individual: An Old Term, or What Does the Continuum Consist of?.- Are There Infinite Numbers? - An Unresolved Argument Between Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli.- Johann Bernoulli's Rules of Differential.- What Does "Equal" Mean?.- Euler Absolutizes Formal Arithmetic.- Accents in Algebraic Analysis, According to Euler.- Bolzano: The Republican Revolutionary of Analysis.- Cauchy: The Bourgeois Revolutionary as a Restorer.- The Interregnum: Analysis on Swampy Ground.- Weierstrass: The Last Attempt at a Substantial Analysis.- The Detachment of Analysis from Reality, and the Introduction of Actual Infinity into the Fundamentals of Mathematics.- Analysis With or Without Paradoxes.