A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity [Hardcover]

Luke Hodgkin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198529376 | ISBN-13: 978-0198529378 | Publication Date: August 11, 2005

A History of Mathematics covers the evolution of mathematics through time and across the major Eastern and Western civilizations. It begins in Babylon, then describes the trials and tribulations of the Greek mathematicians. The important, and often neglected, influence of both Chinese and Islamic mathematics is covered in detail, placing the description of early Western mathematics in a global context. The book concludes with modern mathematics, covering recent developments such as the advent of the computer, chaos theory, topology, mathematical physics, and the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem. Containing more than 100 illustrations and figures, this text, aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates, addresses the methods and challenges associated with studying the history of mathematics. The reader is introduced to the leading figures in the history of mathematics (including Archimedes, Ptolemy, Qin Jiushao, al-Kashi, al-Khwasizmi, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Helmholtz, Hilbert, Alan Turing, and Andrew Wiles) and their fields. An extensive bibliography with cross-references to key texts will provide invaluable resource to students and exercises (with solutions) will stretch the more advanced reader.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Hodgkin sets his book apart by going beyond the expected...Hodgkin offers the history of mathematics from the appealing viewpoint of a questioning reader."--CHOICE

About the Author

Luke Hodgkin has taught mathematics and its history at the universities of Warwick and Algiers, and most recently at King's College, London. He studied mathematics at Balliol College and St. John's College, Oxford, and is a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is now a freelance writer and teacher.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198529376
• ISBN-13: 978-0198529378
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,099,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A History of Mathematics, March 26, 2008

By 

Sam Adams (Minnesota. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity (Hardcover)

A slightly more descriptive title for this book would be On the History of Mathematics, because the book is not a chronology and detailed narrative of the development of mathematics over the course of human history, but rather a careful, questioning look at selected past moments in mathematics. It does not attempt to tell a comprehensive story of its subject, and in fact ponders at times how such a story should be told. The writing style is polished and reflective. The author often compares the methods, notation, meanings, and possible intentions of earlier mathematicians to those of our own, and contemplates what the differences might imply for our understanding of the texts. The book is a scholarly, thoughtful overview, and would work well as an introductory supplement to more comprehensive general histories of mathematics.

Hodgkin refers often throughout the text to Fauvel and Gray's The History of Mathematics: A Reader.

Brief Contents
Introduction
1. Babylonian mathematics
2. Greeks and 'origins'
3. Greeks, practical and theoretical
4. Chinese mathematics
5. Islam, neglect and discovery
6. Understanding the scientific revolution
7. The calculus
8. Geometry and space
9. Modernity and its anxieties
10. A chaotic end?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

"We have not, unfortunately, resisted the temptation to cover too wide a sweep, from Babylon in 2000 BCE to Princeton 10 years ago. We have, however, selected, leaving out (for example) Egypt, the Indian contribution aside from Kerala, and most of the European eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sometimes a chapter focuses on a culture, sometimes on a historical period, sometimes (the calculus) on a specific event or turning-point. At each stage our concern will be to raise questions, to consider how the various authorities address them, perhaps to give an opinion of our own, and certainly to prompt you for one.

"Accordingly, the emphasis falls sometimes on history itself, and sometimes on historiography: the study of what historians are doing." (4)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing math history, April 7, 2006

By 

Jan White "math_is_for_girls" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity (Hardcover)

Mr. Hodgkin gives a great overview of the history of mathematics, the current state of historical arguments, and all the references (including websites) for further study. At 262 pages it is very readable - I was not looking for a ponderous work with every possible fact catalogued. His approach is refreshingly irreverent and even funny:
"10th century Damascus must surely have been unique as a place where copying the text of Euclid could earn you a living." and
"Perhaps rather than decrying the 'low level' of geometry present in Vitruvius's architecture, we should think about the fact that it was a Roman, rather than a Greek, who bothered to write such a treatise....We have different cultures (cohabiting in the same empire) with different ideas of what a book is for."
I have slogged my way through many math histories without learning half as much, and to be entertained as well is more than one hopes for in such a book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A historiography-geek history, August 15, 2007

By 

Viktor Blasjo - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity (Hardcover)

Hodgkin is a historiography geek with no interest in writing a history of mathematics other than to nitpick about details. Basically, each chapter summarises the conventional story---usually rather scornfully, and too briefly for anyone to gain from it---and then dwells on a myriad of minuscule objections to this version raised by highly specialised historians and published (for a reason, I would say) in highly specialised journals. This piling up of obscure historiographical hypotheses rarely makes a coherent point, let alone does it contribute to any substantial understanding of the history of mathematics.