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While taking calculus, did any
of the following questions enter your mind?
- What motivated someone to invent calculus?
- Was it solely the product of Newton's mind? Who was
Liebniz? Why is he also credited with inventing calculus?
- Was calculus invented really to solve all the problems
we now study, or were the problems solved only because
someone came up with calculus?
- Why were all these mathematicians men born in
Western Europe (England, France, Germany, Switzerland,
...)? Were there any women involved in creating calculus?
other ethnicities?
- Why was calculus invented by Newton and Liebniz (at
least credited to them), and not by someone before them?
- Have you heard the quote by Newton "If I
have seen farther than others, it is because I have
stood on the shoulders of giants" and wondered
who were the giants he is talking about?
If any of these questions resonate with you, then you
may want to take this class on the History
of Calculus, and learn more about the mathematics
that was needed to start the development of calculus,
the mathematicians who developed calculus and precalculus,
their feuds, the false stories and the true stories about
Newton, Descartes, Fermat, Leibnitz, Euler, Kepler, Riemann,
Cauchy, whether or not calculus was really known and invented
by the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, ...
THIS is a MATH
COURSE not a HUMANITIES COURSE;
HISTORY however plays a large role in this MATH COURSE,
so it might sound like a humanites course
and at time feel like a humanities course, but it is a MATH COURSE
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