"That final, key step [precisely definition of a limit] was performed by Weierstrass. But why wasn't Newton or Leibniz, or even Cauchy, able to do this?... At issue, almost certainly, is the level of process that the human mind can cope with as an entity in itself."
-- Keith Devlin, The Language of Mathematics
It's a pretty good book overall, a good historical view of things I already sort of knew. But 1998, it definitely didn't buy into proper representation of contributors. Little mention of Babylonians, not a single mention of the Islamic Golden Age. Babylon "didn't do much" then the Greeks did everything that they could until Newton and Leibniz saved the day.
Oh well.
I wonder about Edna Kramer's interpretation. 700 or so pages. I remember the last few pages sort of blew my mind that I could read that many pages about math. Let's see this time. After that, I think I'll stick to Quanta and other such sites and their breakthrough articles. I think I can create a good summary and put that issue to bed for the foreseeable future. Then Marcel. Then Henry George. Then Mudimbe. Then Braudel. I remember a lot of very good chunks from Braudel, and I quote his ideas often. I want to get into it at the end of the search so that I maximize context. And then I have that other book coming. That one will be particular interesting. Maybe after Marcel. We'll see.
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