Table of Contents

TO ANY PROSPECTIVE READER 1. General Prospectus 2. The Age of Empiricism 3. Firmly Established 4. The European Depression 5. "Detour through India, Arabia, and Spain" 6. "Four Centuries of Transition, 1202-1603" 7. "The Beginning of Modern Mathematics, 1637-1687" 8. Extensions of Number 9. Toward Mathematical Structure 10. Arithmetic Generalized 11. Emergence of Structural Analysis 12. Cardinal and Ordinal to 1902 13. "From Intuition to Absolute Rigor, 1700-1900" 14. Rational Arithmetic after Fermat 15. Contributions from Geometry 16. The Impulse from Science 17. From Mechanics to Generalized Variables 18. From Applications to Abstractions 19. Differential and Difference Equations 20. Invariance 21. Certain Major Theories of Functions 22. Through Physics to General Analysis and Abstractness 23. Uncertainties and Probabilities NOTES INDEX

About the Author

Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960) was born in Scotland, studied mathematics at universities in the United States, and taught at the University of Washington and the California Institute of Technology. He wrote several books on the history of mathematics, including another Dover title, The Magic of Numbers. He also wrote many science-fiction novels under the pseudonym John Taine.