James Gregorie on tangents and the ``Taylor'' rule for series expansions (Q1313401): Difference between revisions

Although the importance of the research of James Gregory in the early history of the calculus has been known since \textit{H. W. Turnbull}'s edition of the ``James Gregory Tercentenary Memorial Volume'' (London 1939; Zbl 0060.009)], surprisingly little profound historical research about his investigations was carried out in the following decades. The present paper is a modified version of chapter 3 of the author's unpublished Ph. D. dissertation ``Studies on James Gregorie (1638-1675)'' (Princeton University, 1989). An essential part of it is the analysis of Gregorie's (second) method of tangents. This method consists in essence of a set of rules yielding directly the subtangent of sums and differences, of fourth and mean proportionals (and hence of products and quotients) of functions and of the subtangent of a power of a function, provided the subtangent(s) of the function(s) involved are known. The relations to results in Isaac Barrow's ``Geometrical Lectures'' are discussed in detail. The author also analyzes Gregorie's series expansions for cycloids, as well as certain important transformations and series expansions connected with it. He shows that all of these can be explained without using calculus techniques. Gregorie moved from geometrical methods towards a more algebraic approach.