Old and new views of numbers -- from the history of the concept of number (Q817713)

The authors review some of the conceptions of numbers held from ancient to modern times. After noting the usual important ancient Greek mathematicians and philosophers, they scamper quickly to the late 19th century, taking in only Cusa, Kant, Gauss and Mill on the way. Then they consider the usual principal figures, such as Cantor, Dedekind, Kronecker, Peano, Frege, Russell and Hilbert, and go up to some modern constructivists, geneticists and structuralists. No note is taken of developments in the Far East or India, or among ethnic cultures. The focus lies largely upon finite positive cardinal integers; little or nothing is said about zero, one, or negative or transfinite numbers.