Jean Christianidis - Böcker

The discussions of theoretical issues involved in the history of science have not received sufficient attention. This volume is a contribution to this ongoing discussion and deals with many such issues in the historiography of science, concentrating mainly on what is known as the internalist approach. The topics include ancient Greek mathematics during the Enlightenment, the physical sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as discussions of the relationship between history and philosophy of science. Both beginners in the fields of history and/or philosophy of science as well as scholars who have been already working in these fields should benefit from these articles.

This volume offers an English translation of all ten extant books of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetica, along with a comprehensive conceptual, historical, and mathematical commentary.Before his work became the inspiration for the emerging field of number theory in the seventeenth century, Diophantus (ca. 3rd c. CE) was known primarily as an algebraist. This volume explains how his method of solving arithmetical problems agrees both conceptually and procedurally with the premodern algebra later practiced in Arabic, Latin, and European vernaculars, and how this algebra differs radically from the modern algebra initiated by François Viète and René Descartes. It also discusses other surviving traces of ancient Greek algebra and follows the influence of the Arithmetica in medieval Islam, Byzantium, and the European Renaissance down to the 1621 publication of Claude-Gaspard Bachet’s edition. After the English translation the book provides a problem-by-problem commentary explaining the solutions in a manner compatible with Diophantus’s mode of thought.The Arithmetica of Diophantus provides an invaluable resource for historians of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as those studying ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Byzantine, and Renaissance history. In addition, the volume is also suitable for mathematicians and mathematics educators.

This volume offers an English translation of all ten extant books of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetica, along with a comprehensive conceptual, historical, and mathematical commentary.Before his work became the inspiration for the emerging field of number theory in the seventeenth century, Diophantus (ca. 3rd c. CE) was known primarily as an algebraist. This volume explains how his method of solving arithmetical problems agrees both conceptually and procedurally with the premodern algebra later practiced in Arabic, Latin, and European vernaculars, and how this algebra differs radically from the modern algebra initiated by François Viète and René Descartes. It also discusses other surviving traces of ancient Greek algebra and follows the influence of the Arithmetica in medieval Islam, Byzantium, and the European Renaissance down to the 1621 publication of Claude-Gaspard Bachet’s edition. After the English translation the book provides a problem-by-problem commentary explaining the solutions in a manner compatible with Diophantus’s mode of thought.The Arithmetica of Diophantus provides an invaluable resource for historians of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as those studying ancient Greek, medieval Islamic and Byzantine, and Renaissance history. In addition, the volume is also suitable for mathematicians and mathematics educators.

The twentieth century is the period during which the history of Greek mathematics reached its greatest acme. Indeed, it is by no means exaggerated to say that Greek mathematics represents the unique field from the wider domain of the general history of science which was included in the research agenda of so many and so distinguished scholars, from so varied scientific communities (historians of science, historians of philosophy, mathematicians, philologists, philosophers of science, archeologists etc. ), while new scholarship of the highest quality continues to be produced. This volume includes 19 classic papers on the history of Greek mathematics that were published during the entire 20th century and affected significantly the state of the art of this field. It is divided into six self-contained sections, each one with its own editor, who had the responsibility for the selection of the papers that are republished in the section, and who wrote the introduction of the section. It constitutes a kind of a Reader book which is today, one century after the first publications of Tannery, Zeuthen, Heath and the other outstanding figures of the end of the 19th and the beg- ning of 20th century, rather timely in many respects.

This volume includes a selection of 19 classic papers on the history of Greek mathematics that were published during the 20th century and affected significantly the state of the art of this field. It is divided into six thematic sections and covers all the major issues of the Greek mathematical production. First, the inclusion in one volume of a considerable number of papers that had been published for the first time in old, and in certain cases hard to find, scientific journals representing turning-points in the history of the field, constitutes a particularly useful aid for all those working on the history of mathematics. Second, by means of the selected papers and the introductory texts of six well-known modern historians of ancient mathematics that accompany them, the reader can follow the ways the historiography of Greek mathematics developed. Finally, the introductory texts that precede each chapter help the reader to approach critically the selected papers and at the same time to get an idea of the issues being further clarified by the new historiographical approaches.The audience of the book includes scholars from history and philosophy of mathematics and mathematical sciences, scholars from history of science, students in the field of history of mathematics and history of sciences.