L'Idéal Scientifique des Mathématiciens: Dans l'Antiquité et dans les Temps Modernes

Abstract

THE aim of this work has been carefully explained by the author, and the reader must continually bear that fact in mind. The book is not a history of mathematics; it is not an account of striking discoveries, or a criticism of mathematical methods, as such. It is an attempt, in the light of our present knowledge, to trace the principal currents of thought by which professional mathematicians during different periods have been consciously or unconsciously influenced. No hard-and-fast boundary lines have been laid down; it is merely for the sake of convenience that the whole time considered has been divided into three successive stages. The first of these ends when the classical Greek methods had practically lost their prestige and fertility; the second when (at the end of the eighteenth century) the new methods introduced by Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and Euler seemed to have reached in like manner the limit of their powers and to be incapable of suggesting really new and important fields of research.

L'Idéal Scientifique des Mathématiciens: Dans l'Antiquité et dans les Temps Modernes.

By Prof. Pierre Boutroux. (Nouvelle Collection scientifique.) Pp. 274. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1920.) 8 francs net.