The continuous, the discrete and the infinitesimal in philosophy and mathematics

DOI10.1007/978-3-030-18707-1MaRDI QIDQ2419909zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors John L. Bell

Publication date 4 June 2019

Published in The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18707-1

zbMATH Keywords

continuousdiscretehistory of the continuuminfinitesimal

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Philosophy of mathematics (00A30) General histories, source books (01A05) History of mathematical logic and foundations (03-03)

Review text

This book consists of two parts. In the first part the author discusses the history and philosophy of the concepts continuous, discrete and infinitesimal from the Greeks until the early twentieth century. As far as I can see in this part the author succeeds in giving a quite complete overview of the subject, including not only the obvious sources. He discusses also the views of oriental, Islamic and medieval European authors, and, for example, the ideas of Hegel, Du Bois Reymond, Veronese and Brentano. The second part is devoted to the role that the notions continuous, discrete and infinitesimal play in modern mathematics, in topology, category theory, constructivist analysis, non-standard analysis and smooth infinitesimal analysis. The second part is quite a natural sequel to the first part although inevitably more technical.

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