nydus/A History of MathematicsPublic

This text examines the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern era, highlighting how the fall of Constantinople and the invention of the printing press catalyzed a revival of classical learning. It traces the shift toward scientific inquiry through the rise of pure mathematics and astronomy, detailing the intellectual struggle against established scholastic and ecclesiastical authority.

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Table of Contents

Vieta to Descartes

Galileo is the founder of the science of dynamics. Among his contemporaries it was chiefly the novelties he detected in the sky that made him celebrated, but Lagrange claims that

his astronomical discoveries required only a telescope and perseverance, while it took an extraordinary genius to discover laws from phenomena, which we see constantly and of which the true explanation escaped all earlier philosophers. The first contributor to the science of mechanics after Galileo was Descartes.

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