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Article ID: CBB001320192

A Natural History of Mathematics: George Peacock and the Making of English Algebra (2013)

Lambert, Kevin Thomas (Author)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 104
Pages: 278-302

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Mathematics Natural history Philosophy of mathematics Arithmetic Algebra Science and culture 19th century Great Britain Peacock, George

In a series of papers read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society through the 1820s, the Cambridge mathematician George Peacock laid the foundation for a natural history of arithmetic that would tell a story of human progress from counting to modern arithmetic. The trajectory of that history, Peacock argued, established algebraic analysis as a form of universal reasoning that used empirically warranted operations of mind to think with symbols on paper. The science of counting would suggest arithmetic, arithmetic would suggest arithmetical algebra, and, finally, arithmetical algebra would suggest symbolic algebra. This philosophy of suggestion provided the foundation for Peacock's principle of equivalent forms, which justified the practice of nineteenth-century English symbolic algebra. Peacock's philosophy of suggestion owed a considerable debt to the early Cambridge Philosophical Society culture of natural history. The aim of this essay is to show how that culture of natural history was constitutively significant to the practice of nineteenth-century English algebra.

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