Who first invented calculus - Newton or Leibniz?
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From: John Stafford on 6 Jan 2010 09:02 In article <3bb4b02f-c083-40ab-b224-281beb358d90(a)c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>, chazwin <chazwyman(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Jan 5, 3:36�am, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: > > It matters not. The Calculus was not philosophically rationalized until > > quite recently. Regardless, it was perfectly useful until then, and > > remains useful today. > > > > For the obsessive of the 'Inductive Reasoning' thread - eat your hearts > > out. > > > > Back to the subnect, it was found that Leibniz's approach was more > > useful, fewer hacks, more direct. Leibniz wins. > > Leibniz was a better publicist, whilst Newton was a loner and recluse. > That is why we tend to use his notation. > There is evidence that Leibniz stole the idea on a trip to England, > and Newton accused him of that. > But as it was useless in the 17th Century it hardly matters. It certainly mattered regardless of material applications because publishing the formalization of The Calculus brought the concept to more of the general public, fostering understanding. In that regard, we have Leibniz to thank.
From: karl on 6 Jan 2010 09:36 chazwin schrieb: > On Jan 5, 3:36 am, John Stafford <n...(a)droffats.ten> wrote: >> It matters not. The Calculus was not philosophically rationalized until >> quite recently. Regardless, it was perfectly useful until then, and >> remains useful today. >> >> For the obsessive of the 'Inductive Reasoning' thread - eat your hearts >> out. >> >> Back to the subnect, it was found that Leibniz's approach was more >> useful, fewer hacks, more direct. Leibniz wins. > > Leibniz was a better publicist, whilst Newton was a loner and recluse. > That is why we tend to use his notation. > There is evidence that Leibniz stole the idea on a trip to England, > and Newton accused him of that. Can you provide this evidence?
From: Larry Hammick on 6 Jan 2010 10:22 "Immortalist" <reanimater_2000(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:4bf1106b-6020-4ca1-afe2-431917d06014(a)s3g2000yqs.googlegroups.com... [ Development of the quarrel .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_and_Newton_calculus_controversy ] Look at the length of this thread. It illustrates that the history of analysis is a long and painful and messy story. Trivia question. Who was the first to hit on the following definition, and when? "A function f: R to R is continuous at a point x iff for every B>0 there exists A>0 such that, if |y-x| < A then |f(y) - f(x)| <B". Answer below ... Heine in 1888, more than 200 years after the Newton-Leibniz kafuffle.
From: M Purcell on 6 Jan 2010 14:00 On Jan 6, 7:22 am, "Larry Hammick" <larryhamm...(a)telus.net> wrote: > "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message > > news:4bf1106b-6020-4ca1-afe2-431917d06014(a)s3g2000yqs.googlegroups.com... > [ > Development of the quarrel > ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_and_Newton_calculus_controversy > ] > > Look at the length of this thread. It illustrates that the history of > analysis is a long and painful and messy story. This topic reminds me of my college days and I suspect we were attempting to assign blame rather than credit. But now, what seems relevant about this story is that Newton didn't seem eager to make his work available to other people and resorted to political maneuvering.
From: Les Cargill on 6 Jan 2010 19:50
M Purcell wrote: > On Jan 6, 7:22 am, "Larry Hammick" <larryhamm...(a)telus.net> wrote: >> "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message >> >> news:4bf1106b-6020-4ca1-afe2-431917d06014(a)s3g2000yqs.googlegroups.com... >> [ >> Development of the quarrel >> ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_and_Newton_calculus_controversy >> ] >> >> Look at the length of this thread. It illustrates that the history of >> analysis is a long and painful and messy story. > > This topic reminds me of my college days and I suspect we were > attempting to assign blame rather than credit. But now, what seems > relevant about this story is that Newton didn't seem eager to make his > work available to other people and resorted to political maneuvering. But Newton was an alchemist. They were like that, according to what I've been told. -- Les Cargill |