All Questions
3 questions
13
votes
3
answers
2k
views
History of the abstract method in mathematics
Recently I have "finished" a 13-year on and off research on the history of the mathematical notion of equivalence. At the end of which, I learned that we owe the nowadays rather elementary process of "...
9
votes
0
answers
965
views
Has anyone pursued Frege's idea of numbers as second-order concepts?
Gottlob Frege was a pivotal figure in the history of mathematical logic. He gave an analysis of numbers that proceeded along roughly the following lines, in his books "The Foundations of Arithmetic" (...
7
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Sine and Archimedes' derivation of the area of the circle
The elementary "opposite over hypotenuse" definition of the sine function defines the sine of an angle, not a real number. As discussed in the article "A Circular Argument" [Fred Richman, The College ...