February 26, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
Rottweilers of Leibniz and Newton: Johann and Fatio
It also has to be stressed that the idea of
limits is not very recent (meaning to say that it is not totally an European
phenomenon) and has been studied in bits and pieces by many civilizations of
the past including Chinese, Greeks, Hindus and Arabs.
Most of us will be well aware of the Zeno’s
paradoxes which in modern mathematics are viewed as problems of ‘convergent
infinite series’.
In the May 1697 issue of the same journal Leibniz
wrote a paper on in which he described his own contributions to the foundations
of differential calculus which greatly offended the Swiss-born mathematician
Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who had moved to England and become closely
associated with Newton, perhaps even his close friend.
Now it was well known that the journal Acta
Eruditorum had become a mouth piece for the Leibniz camp (strongly and
vehemently supported by both the Bernoulli brothers Jacob and Johann) which
Fatio thought needed to be counter balanced by his voice from England.
Just to be fair, if Leibniz had Acta
Eruditorum on his side then Newton had the complete backing of the scientific
journal of Royal Society “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.”
“Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society” was founded 17 years before the Acta and is considered by many as the
first true science journal.
It is of course ignoring the historical
fact that multiple civilizations have existed before the European civilization
and assuming that none of them had had their own scientific journals devoted
exclusively to works of mathematics and sciences.
Take for instance the great University of
the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in flourished somewhere between 800 AD to 1258
AD when the Mongol hoards destroyed this intellectual center in just a matter
of week of unwonted pillage and ransacking.
It is hard to believe that this great
center of excellence would be lacking in its own scientific periodical that was
published regularly.
Anyway, at least of the modern times after
so called post-enlightenment (whose results are barely visible) ‘Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society’ was the first truly science journal.
It is often considered that Fatio and his
attempts to defend Newton as the founder of calculus initiated the bitter
priority dispute that would erupt to its maximum vitriolic in the 1710s.
Now if Newton had Fatio as his Rottweiler,
then Leibniz had Johann Bernoulli had his in Europe.
Let us see how each one of them vehemently
supported and championed for their hero.
In 1696, Johann Bernoulli decided to try
out an ingenious way to detect the true creator of calculus – essentially it
was attempt to prove that Newton was an imposter who was trying to take the
credit for an idea that was discovered in Europe by Leibniz.
So he proposed the famous brachistochrone
problem in the June 1696 issue of Acta Eruditorum.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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