Zur Geschichte des Abbildungsbegriffs. (On the history of the concept of mapping) (Q1068802)

The author asks himself two questions: (1) What, in the history of geometry, induced the introduction of geometric transformations, in which the whole plane is considered as the object of such mappings (rather than individual curves); (2) What were the reasons that such a definition was generally accepted? His replies, supported by numerous quotations, are: (1) It was A. F. Möbius, who in his ''Der barycentrische Calcul'' of 1827 first extended mappings to the set of all points in the plane, in order to be able to define adequately the relation of ''collineation''; (2) it was Felix Klein, in his ''Erlangen Programm'' of 1872, who considered groups of transformations as acting upon the whole space (this point of view is in contrast to that of L. Euler, for whom a transformation is a mapping of a given curve into another one, the author points out), and Klein's characterization of geometries by means of groups of transformations reinforced the new definition of the 'Abbildungsbegriff' or concept of mapping.