The history of the calculus and its conceptual development

Abstract

Fluent description of the development of both the integral and differential calculus. Early beginnings in antiquity, medieval contributions, and a century of anticipation lead up to a consideration of Newton and Leibniz, the period of indecison that followed them, and the final rigorous formulation that we know today.This book, for the first time, provides laymen and mathematicians alike with a detailed picture of the historical development of one of the most momentous achievements of the human intellect ― the calculus. It describes with accuracy and perspective the long development of both the integral and the differential calculus from their early beginnings in antiquity to their final emancipation in the 19th century from both physical and metaphysical ideas alike and their final elaboration as mathematical abstractions, as we know them today, defined in terms of formal logic by means of the idea of