scientific article; zbMATH DE number 193427
The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually. `REHSEIS' is the acronym for `Recherches Épistémologiques et Historiques sur les Sciences Exactes et les Institutions Scientifiques'. This result of their labours has been produced in time for the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution. Nine articles are presented, divided into six sections. The first section, focussed on Lagrange, comprises an essay by C. Houzel on the theory of equations and a piece by the editor on Lagrange's reading of Diophantus. The second contains a single article, by C. Gilain, on the integral calculus as handled by Condorcet. This topic was given a bad press by Lagrange himself, and it is valuable to have a lengthy modern appraisal. The third section also contains one piece: by K. Chemla and S. Pahaut, on duality properties in the spherical trigonometry of Euler and various French figures. The fourth section, the most valuable in the book, comprises articles on probability with d'Alembert (M. Paty) and with Condorcet (P. Crépel). The fifth section is also a pair, concerned with mechanics: the formulation due to Lagrange (W. Barroso-Filho and C. Comte) and methods in elasticity theory from Euler through Lagrange to Germain, Poisson, Navier and Cauchy (A. Dahan-Dalmedico). Finally, M. Morange briefly surveys the obituaries of naturalists read by Condorcet. While all the articles are of a satisfactory standard, and the best ones more significant than that, the conception of the book overall is hard to understand. Most of the articles do indeed focus on the period around the time of the Revolution, as the title suggests (appropriately, Condorcet's portrait decorates the cover); but that of Dahan-Dalmedico (who does not belong to REHSEIS) seems rather out of place, as many of its 90 pages are concerned with mathematicians of the succeeding generation. Again, the contribution by Morange is the only one not concerned with mathematics; but since it is included, one wonders why companion articles were not prepared on French chemistry and geology, for example. Finally, the authors have not been asked to follow a common style in footnotes and references, so that the reader has to readjust for each article. Dahan- Dalmedico even sprinkles her text with date-coded references, as if a bibliography were given; but in fact the references have to be sought among the 84 footnotes. In some compensation for these shortcomings, the book is competed by name and subject indexes, a practise that one could wish become standard in French scholarship as the third century after the Revolution begins.
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