Timeline for Do mathematical objects disappear?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 23, 2015 at 3:24 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Or from algebraic geometry! | |
| Dec 23, 2015 at 1:28 | comment | added | user21349 | @CarlMummert: Infinitesimals never disappeared from engineering and the sciences. | |
| Dec 23, 2015 at 0:57 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | The notion of "infinitesimally small numbers" itself disappeared, eventually. It is now studied in nonstandard analysis, which as the name suggests is different from the "standard" approach used in calculus and real analysis. | |
| Dec 22, 2015 at 19:47 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Ben Webster♦ | ||
| Dec 22, 2015 at 16:33 | comment | added | user21349 | I don't think this is an accurate depiction of the history. Newton's notation and Leibniz's notation were isomorphic to each other. Newton's $o$ was equivalent to Leibniz's $dt$. (Newton had a convention about omitting the $o$ in certain contexts, which confused things somewhat. See Boyer, p. 201 ) Also, Leibniz did not wholeheartedly endorse the idea that his notation was a notation for infinitesimals. He sometimes preferred to describe differentials in the same way we would today describe differential forms (Boyer, p. 210). Leibniz notation won because it was more expressive. | |
| Dec 22, 2015 at 15:39 | history | answered | Denis Serre | CC BY-SA 3.0 |