Why historical research needs mathematicians now more than ever
This author feels himself to be a mathematician and a historian of mathematics but detects an ``acrimonious divorce between both fields. The former were ``interested as ever in history but cut off from history ``to avoid anachronism (p.~113).\N\NHis aim is ``a new internalist historiography (p.~114), and he does not miss the opportunity to use the modern term of being ``inclusive (p.~116). He pleads for a ``complimentary internalism to complement the ``orthodox one. It is his aim to overcome ``photorealism, which is his term for the ``exact adherence to the surface~[\textit{sic!}] form of the written text (p.~119) and what is claimed to ``effectively preclude comparative, synthesising studies. But this is not demonstrated. He asserts that ``comparative, synthesising perspectives necessarily [\ldots] are [\ldots] at odds with photorealism (p.~120), without giving any argument; instead he confines to showing two pedestrian examples.\N\NHis alternative is ``global cognitive contextualisation (p.~120). ``Cognitive questions concern how certain ideas functioned in the minds~[\textit{sic!}] of historical thinkers. (p.~118). However, no method is specified or at least suggested how to grasp the age-old chimera of the ``idea in the mind of~[\ldots].\N\NRelying on several examples, this author feels himself qualified to ``understand the significance of the technical details of an argument (p.~123). Undoubtedly, ``only mathematicians are likely to possess this required expertise (p.~128, ``conclusion).\N\NIt is no novelty that a pure mathematician knows by himself how to do history of mathematics in the right way, in disregard of any methodological or even (\textit{horribile dictu}) philosophical perspectives. The word ``change (or ``development) which expresses the substance of history is carefully avoided in this new perspective, which this author claims to be a historiographical one.\N\NThe reader may get the impression that this mathematician did not yet manage to open a productive discussion with historians of mathematics. The once substantial struggle regarding the relation between nonstandard and classical infinitesimal analysis is plainly valued an ``anachronistically motived debate that is orthogonal to the concerns of historical mathematicians (p.~115). However, it really confronted the ``idea[s] in the mind[s] of the former researchers with the modern concepts and even stimulated philosophers to enter the debate.\N\NFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1537.01004].
- Before Voltaire. The French origins of ``Newtonian mechanics, 1680--1715
- Calculus reordered. A history of the big ideas
- Change is the only constant. The wisdom of calculus in a madcap world
- Contextualizing Unguru’s 1975 Attack on the Historiography of Ancient Greek Mathematics
- Exploring Leibniz's Nachlass at the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek in Hanover
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6710836 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3154756 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3661295 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 47779 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 51445 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2150902 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7088728 (Why is no real title available?)
- Johann Bernoulli and the cycloid: a theorem for posterity
- Lost in translation? Reading Newton on inverse-cube trajectories
- Newton's easy quadratures ``omitted for the sake of brevity.
- On what has been called Leibniz's rigorous foundation of infinitesimal geometry by means of Riemannian sums
- Pietro Mengoli's 1650 proof that the harmonic series diverges
- Quo vadis \textit{history of ancient mathematics} who will you take with you, and who will be left behind? Essay review prompted by a recent publication
- The Early Period of the Calculus of Variations
- The Leibniz catenary and approximation of \(e\) -- an analysis of his unpublished calculations
- The myth of Leibniz's proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus
- The rectification of quadratures as a central foundational problem for the early Leibnizian calculus
- The visualization of quadratures in the mystery of corollary 3 to proposition 41 of Newton's \textit{Principia}
- Variables, limits, and infinitesimals in Portugal in the late 18th century.
- Visual thinking in mathematics. An epistemological study
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