Displaying similar documents to “Poincaré in the archives — two examples”

Positive Thinking. Conceptions of Negative Quantities in the Netherlands and the Reception of Lacroix’s Algebra Textbook

Danny J. Beckers (2000)

Revue d'histoire des mathématiques

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The beginning of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of several new approaches to negative numbers. New notions of rigour made the 18th century conceptions of negative quantities unacceptable. This paper discusses theories of negative numbers emerging in the Netherlands in the early 19th century. Dutch mathematicians then opted for a different approach than that of their contemporaries, in Germany or France. The Dutch translation (1821) of Lacroix’s illustrates the ‘Dutch’ notion...

Thomas Harriot on Combinations

Ian Maclean (2005)

Revue d'histoire des mathématiques

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Thomas Harriot (1560?–1621) is known today as an innovative mathematician and a natural philosopher with wide intellectual horizons. This paper will look at his interest in combinations in three contexts: language (anagrams), natural philosophy (the question of atomism) and mathematics (number theory), in order to assess where to situate him in respect of three current historiographical debates: 1) whether there existed in the late Renaissance two opposed mentalities, the occult and...