This seminal collection gathers together many general writings of one of the world's leading historians of mathematics. Organized thematically, these essays ponder the intellectual underpinnings of the field, examine the major topics in the history of mathematics, and recount the bizarre history of pseudomath. Ivor Grattan-Guinness explores how people understand mathematics-the routes of learning they take as they make important discoveries and study mathematical concepts and theories. The essays in the first part of the book discuss the history of mathematics as a field and its central philosophical issues. Those in the next part address the history of mathematics education and its importance to current modes of teaching. In the last section Grattan-Guinness investigates various understudied aspects of math, including numerology, Masonic symbols in classical music, and the links between mathematics and Christianity. This collection includes several essays that are difficult to find anywhere else. All historians of mathematics and students of the field will want a copy of this remarkable resource on their bookshelves.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness has been a leader in the field for decades. His ideas are at times contentious, which is all the more reason to have them all together in one volume. There is nothing else available like this, because there is no other researcher like Grattan-Guinness. This volume is a must for math historians, math philosophers, and all collegiate libraries. -- Amy Shell-Gellasch, editor of From Calculus to Computers: Using the Last 200 Years of Mathematics History in the Classroom

About the Author
Ivor Grattan-Guinness is a professor emeritus of the history of mathematics and logic at Middlesex University. He is author of Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840: From the Calculus and Mechanics to Mathematical Analysis and Mathematical Physics and editor of the Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, also published by Johns Hopkins.

Reviews
Here, Grattan-Guinness, one of the world's leading mathematics historians, has written the seminal how-to-book for the history of mathematics... This reviewer found the book hard to put down. Choice 2010 In spite of the great variation in themes, the book is quite coherent and gives anyone dealing with the history of mathematics food for thought. -- Teun Koetsier History and Philosophy of Logic 2010



Book Information
ISBN 9780801892486
Author Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Format Paperback
Page Count 392
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 522g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm