Hellman, Hal Great Feuds in Mathematics Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever
1. Edition - September 2006 21.90 Euro 2006. 256 Pages, Hardcover - General Reading - ISBN-10: 0-471-64877-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-471-64877-2 - John Wiley & Sons
Short description If you thought mathematics was an exact and staid field of endeavor, think again. Following Hellman's previous Great Feuds titles that poked into the closets of science, technology, and medicine, this one presents the key debates and little-known history of ten mathematical disputes. From Descartes battling Fermat for the honor of inventing analytic geometry, to Poincaré wrangling with Russell over the logical foundations of mathematics, to the absolutists fighting the fallibilists today over how mathematics should be taught, this book provides a fascinating and colorful look behind the numbers game.
From the contents Acknowledgements.
Introduction.
1. Tartaglia versus Cardano. Solving Cubic Equations.
2. Descartes versus Fermat. Analytic Geometry and Optics.
3. Newton versus Leibniz. Credit for the Calculus.
4. Bernoulli versus Bernoulli. Sibling Rivalry of the Highest Order.
5. Sylvester versus Huxley. Ivory Tower or Real World?.
6. Kronecker versus Cantor. Mathematical Insanity.
7. Borel versus Zermelo. The Notorious Axiom.
8. Poincaré versus Russell. The Logical Foundations of Mathematics.
9. Hilbert versus Brouwer. Formalism versus Intuitionism.
10. Absolutists/Platonists versus Fallibilists/Constructionists. Are Mathematical Advances Discoveries or Inventions?.
