Consideration of Various Points of Analysis. Offprint from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 104. THE CALCULUS OF OPERATIONS

HERSCHEL, John Frederick William, Sir

Verlag: London: printed by W. Bulmer [for the Royal Society], 1814

First edition, very rare separately-paginated offprint (journal pagination 440-468), of Herschel's account of the 'calculus of operations,' which formed a major part of the programme of reform promoted by the group of Cambridge mathematicians (which included Babbage and Herschel) who called themselves the 'Analytical Society'. Koppelman (p. 156) has argued that the reason that the most important contributions of British mathematicians in the first half of the nineteenth century were to abstract algebra "was a direct response of the English to a specific aspect of the work of Continental analysts which became accessible to them. The subject came to be called, by the English, the calculus of operations." The most important such contributions were made by Duncan Gregory and George Boole. "This technique - the 'calculus of operations', as it was known - was also important to Boole's early mathematical research on the calculus of finite differences; and Boole's knowledge of Gregory's defence of the technique underlies his algebraic analysis of logic in ['Mathematical analysis of logic' (1847)]" (Ewald, From Kant to Hilbert, p. 322). OCLC lists one copy only in US (Northwestern). Provenance: Marcus Nathan Adler (bookplate). Adler (1803-1890) was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1845 until his death, probably the most prominent nineteenth-century rabbi in the English-speaking world. Koppelman, 'The calculus of operations and the rise of abstract algebra,' Archive for the History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 8 (1971), pp. 155-242. 4to, pp. [ii], 29 (the last mis-paginated '33' and corrected in ink manuscript). Nineteenth-century cloth-backed boards, spine lettered in gilt (spine worn, front free endpaper detached). Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1638448439859

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Consideration of Various Points of Analysis....
Verlag: London: printed by W. Bulmer [for the Royal Society]
Erscheinungsdatum: 1814
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Very Good
Auflage: 1st Edition