Article ID: CBB000931919

John Playfair on British Decline in Mathematics (2008)

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This article considers the role John Playfair (1748-1819) played in creating and popularizing the myth that mathematical development halted in Great Britain in the eighteenth century due to mathematicians' irrational attachment to a geometrical approach to the calculus. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Playfair had established his reputation as an energetic teacher, gifted expositor, and skilled natural philosopher. He served as joint professor of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh and as general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, editing the Society's Transactions, while his written accomplishments included Elements of geometry (1795) and Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the earth (1802). He then contributed his talents to the opinionated journal, Edinburgh Review, where his assessments of the contemporary state of mathematics reached a wide audience of intellectuals, gentlemen, and merchants, albeit anonymously. The article expands upon a section of a talk delivered to the Fourth Joint Meeting of the BSHM and CSHPM in Montreal, 27-29 July 2007 (see also Ackerberg-Hastings 2007).

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Description On Playfair's role in the myth of Britain's 18th-century mathematical decline supposedly resulting from an attachment to a geometrical approach to calculus.


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Authors & Contributors
Ferraro, Giovanni
Rossini, Paolo
Giovanni Capobianco
Enea, Maria Rosaria
Wilson, Robin J.
Welsh, Whitney Elizabeth
Concepts
Mathematics
Geometry
Calculus
Proof
India, civilization and culture
Philosophy of mathematics
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
19th century
Medieval
Ancient
16th century
Places
Great Britain
England
London (England)
Russia
Greece
India
Institutions
St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences
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