John Napier: Life, Logarithms, and Legacy - Hardcover

Havil, Julian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691155704 ISBN 13: 9780691155708

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

John Napier is the first contemporary biography to take an in-depth look at the multiple facets of Napier's story: his privileged position as the seventh Laird of Merchiston and the son of influential Scottish landowners; his reputation as a magician who dabbled in alchemy; his interest in agriculture; his involvement with a notorious outlaw; his staunch anti-Catholic beliefs; his interactions with such peers as Henry Briggs, Johannes Kepler, and Tycho Brahe; and, most notably, his estimable mathematical legacy. John Napier assesses one man's life and the lasting influence of his advancements on the mathematical sciences and beyond.

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Julian Havil is the author of Gamma: Exploring Euler's Constant, Nonplussed!: Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas, Impossible?: Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums, and The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On (all Princeton). He is a retired former master at Winchester College, England, where he taught mathematics for more than three decades.

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"Havil is an enthusiastic and engaging writer--he brings to life John Napier’s original work and gives an account of his mathematical ideas. Readers will gain an appreciation for Napier’s brilliance and for an era when scientific computation was still in its infancy. It’s about time someone wrote a book on this subject for a general audience."--Glen Van Brummelen, author ofHeavenly Mathematics

"Offering a thorough look into Napier’s contributions, family lineage, and life, this effectively organized book will be most useful to general readers and those with interests in Napier the man, the Reformation, early seventeenth-century mathematics, and Napier’s influence on logarithms and scientific developments of the time."--Kathy Clark, Florida State University

"Havil has crafted a complete biography of John Napier, including detailed explanations of his mathematical creations, all in the proper historical context. Readers will gain a deep understanding of the background and uses of the logarithm, as well as the significance of Napier’s achievement."--Paul C. Pasles, author of Benjamin Franklin’s Numbers

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"Havil is an enthusiastic and engaging writer--he brings to life John Napier s original work and gives an account of his mathematical ideas. Readers will gain an appreciation for Napier s brilliance and for an era when scientific computation was still in its infancy. It s about time someone wrote a book on this subject for a general audience."--Glen Van Brummelen, author ofHeavenly Mathematics

"Offering a thorough look into Napier s contributions, family lineage, and life, this effectively organized book will be most useful to general readers and those with interests in Napier the man, the Reformation, early seventeenth-century mathematics, and Napier s influence on logarithms and scientific developments of the time."--Kathy Clark, Florida State University

"Havil has crafted a complete biography of John Napier, including detailed explanations of his mathematical creations, all in the proper historical context. Readers will gain a deep understanding of the background and uses of the logarithm, as well as the significance of Napier s achievement."--Paul C. Pasles, author of Benjamin Franklin s Numbers

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John Napier

Life, Logarithms, and Legacy

By Julian Havil

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-15570-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, xv, 
Introduction, 1, 
Chapter One Life and Lineage, 8, 
Chapter Two Revelation and Recognition, 35, 
Chapter Three A New Tool for Calculation, 62, 
Chapter Four Constructing the Canon, 96, 
Chapter Five Analogue and Digital Computers, 131, 
Chapter Six Logistics: The Art of Computing Well, 155, 
Chapter Seven Legacy, 179, 
Epilogue, 207, 
Appendix A Napier's Works, 209, 
Appendix B The Scottish Science Hall of Fame, 210, 
Appendix C Scotland and Conflict, 211, 
Appendix D Scotland and Reformation, 216, 
Appendix E A Stroll Down Memory Lane, 220, 
Appendix F Methods of Multiplying, 229, 
Appendix G Amending Napier's Kinematic Model, 232, 
Appendix H Napier's Inequalities, 233, 
Appendix I Hos Ego Versiculos Feci, 236, 
Appendix J The Rule of Three, 238, 
Appendix K Mercator's Map, 250, 
Appendix L The Swiss Claimant, 264, 
References, 270, 
Index, 275, 

CHAPTER 1

Life and Lineage

May you live in interesting times.

Variously attributed

In this first chapter we attempt to paint a picture of Napier's life and of the world in which he lived it, necessarily using a broad historical brush concerning his life and, having consideration for balance and book length, a brush of even greater width with regard to his Scotland. He was born, lived and died in a tumultuous world of political and religious upheaval, one in which science and superstition, justice and brutality, religion and hatred, life and premature and perhaps violent death coexisted without demur. It defies credulity that someone with his inherited responsibilities and living so remote from the scholarly world of the time would have the motivation and find the opportunity to pursue his academic studies for so long and in such depth. The finer strokes in our picture of him derive from the surviving material relating specifically and reliably to him and, most particularly, the important biography by Mark Napier which we have mentioned in the Introduction. From it we have:

With the exception of those little episodes we have noticed, of battle, murder and sudden death, Popish plots, pestilence and famine, ever and anon demanding more or less of our philosopher's time and attention; together with the whole charge of his own twelve children, and more than half the charge of his unruly brothers, besides farming operations, extending from the shores of the Forth to the banks of the Teith, and the islands on Lochlomond; mingled with occasional demands upon his "singular judgement", from the General Assembly of the church, to the dark outlaw who indulged in magic, and the courtly lawyer who sought a lesson in mensuration; with the exception, we say, of these inevitable interruptions, our philosopher lived the life of an intellectual hermit, entirely devoted to his theological and mathematical speculations, and delighting in no converse so much as the clear crow of his favorite bird, more powerful to "dismiss the demons" than all the incantations of Lilly.

We shall use this involved and ironic quotation as a structure from which our own brief account is formed.

Home and Away

John Napier was born in 1550, as was Charles IX of France, and he died in 1617, the year of the coronation of France's Louis XIII. Locating his dates in an alternative way, he was born three years after the Scottish defeat by the English at the Battle of Pinkie and died two years after the only Roman Catholic Scottish martyr, Saint John Ogilvie, was executed in Glasgow. With these associations we have an encapsulation of the major external influences which shaped his life: the ever-fluid alliances and antagonisms between Scotland, England and France and the momentous effects of the Reformation of the Catholic Church. And he was Scottish. Scotland is not a big country, and neither in Napier's time was it an easy one in which to live or to travel. It measures 274 miles north to south, with a width which varies between 24 miles and 155 miles; its area is somewhat over 30,000 square miles. There is no single natural division to distinguish Scotland's south from England's north; an imaginary line, largely following rivers, mountain ridges and other natural features, meanders from the mouth of the river Tweed in the east, through the Cheviot Hills, to the Solway Firth in the west, with the small town of Gretna the final landfall. After years of conflict, official recognition was given to the 96 mile route by an agreement between the Scottish king Alexander II and the English king Henry III in the Treaty of York of 1237; not that this prevented many military incursions from both sides throughout the tempestuous centuries that followed, with Berwick in particular a recurring area of contention. The topography of Scotland's mainland naturally divides into three: the Southern Uplands (bordering on England), the Central Lowlands above this, and the Highlands to the north and west. Almost two thirds of the mainland comprises mountains and moors, and there are 787 islands, of which 130 are inhabited. It is, and was, a beautiful country with the terrain responsible for that beauty also responsible for the segregation and sometimes isolation of its inhabitants, a point well made by Samuel Johnson:

To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains and islands is equally known with that of Borneo and Sumatra: of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest.

Drovers' routes constituted the main physical infrastructure; roads, where they existed, were poor quality; bridges over the many rivers were rare. News could take days to reach a destination of negligible separation; an express rider could take a week to travel from Edinburgh to London. In short, Napier's Scotland was difficult to negotiate with or within, sparsely and variously populated, and constantly in conflict with England or France or both. Setting aside the small number of monastic foundations, before the Reformation and somewhat after it, its Church was very largely at the mercy of laymen with its foundations corrupt and worldly, its parish churches were frequently empty and mostly in ruin, their congregations often contemptuous of the services, and the bishops were a byword for immorality; James V had five of his illegitimate baby sons appointed to senior church positions, with him enjoying the associated revenue during their minority and them after it. The education system was entirely inadequate at every level, providing only the most basic training for those whose fortune it was to be part of it; schools, where they existed, achieved little and the few universities were not much more than theological training camps. The clan system prevailed in the Highlands, remote from the centres of government, with the most powerful chiefs vying for supremacy with the king. The ruling classes were largely ill-educated or uneducated, albeit with a number of significant exceptions; by 1540 the evidence of written bonds shows that most Scottish nobles could at least write their own name. It was in this environment that this particular and exceptional laird studied classical languages, agriculture and horticulture, engineering, theology – and mathematics.

Napier's home city was Edinburgh, the principal city among those that existed: Stirling, St...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691155704
• ISBN 13: 9780691155708
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland