Éléments de la Théorie des Nombres

Abstract

TO the contemplative mind the science of arithmetic offers irresistible, if tantalising, attractions. The abstract notion of number underlies all scientific knowledge and theory whatever; and it is in terms of it alone that we are compelled to seek for the ultimate statement of the facts of the sensible world. It is most unfortunate that arithmetic should be so often confounded with the vulgar art of logistic—the necessary, but ignoble, reckonings of the exchange and the market-place. Even those who are aware of the distinction often fall into another error, which is almost equally pernicious. To most of them scientific arithmetic means the “Theory of Numbers,” a term which they vaguely associate with an unknown, mysterious branch of mathematics with which only a few eccentric specialists have any concern.

Éléments de la Théorie des Nombres.

Par E. Cahen Pp. viii + 404. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et Fils, 1900.)