"In her book Symbols, Impossible Numbers, and Geometric Entanglements, Helena Pycior paints a novel picture of British mathematical development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has brought together much interesting material whose implications will interest scholars for years to come." Joan L. Richards, Isis
"This remarkable book describes the history of the development of British algebra in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (early modern algebra), focusing on attention on the constitution of algebraic language." Massimo Galuzzi, Mathematical Reviews
Product Description
Symbols, Impossible Numbers, and Geometric Entanglements is the first history of the development and reception of algebra in early modern England and Scotland. Not primarily a technical history, this book analyzes the struggles of a dozen British thinkers to come to terms with early modern algebra, its symbolical style, and negative and imaginary numbers. Professor Pycior uncovers these thinkers as a "test-group" for the symbolic reasoning that would radically change not only mathematics but also logic, philosophy, and language studies. The book also shows how pedagogical and religious concerns shaped the British debate over the relative merits of algebra and geometry. The first book to position algebra firmly in the Scientific Revolution and pursue Newton the algebraist, it highlights Newton's role in completing the evolution of algebra from an esoteric subject into a major focus of British mathematics. Other thinkers covered include Oughtred, Harriot, Wallis, Hobbes, Barrow, Berkeley, and MacLaurin.
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