A Tour of the Calculus

A Tour of the Calculus

by David Berlinski
A Tour of the Calculus

A Tour of the Calculus

by David Berlinski

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Were it not for the calculus, mathematicians would have no way to describe the acceleration of a motorcycle or the effect of gravity on thrown balls and distant planets, or to prove that a man could cross a room and eventually touch the opposite wall. Just how calculus makes these things possible and in doing so finds a correspondence between real numbers and the real world is the subject of this dazzling book by a writer of extraordinary clarity and stylistic brio. Even as he initiates us into the mysteries of real numbers, functions, and limits, Berlinski explores the furthest implications of his subject, revealing how the calculus reconciles the precision of numbers with the fluidity of the changing universe.



"An odd and tantalizing book by a writer who takes immense pleasure in this great mathematical tool, and tries to create it in others."—New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780679747888
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/28/1997
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 422,360
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.87(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Berlinksi was born in New York City. He received a B.A. degree from Columbia College and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has taught mathematics and philosophy at universities in the United States and France.

Table of Contents

Introductionxi
A Note to the Readerxv
The Frame of the Bookxvii
Chapter 1Masters of the Symbols3
Chapter 2Symbols of the Masters9
Chapter 3The Black Blossoms of Geometry16
Chapter 4Cartesian Coordinates21
Chapter 5The Unbearable Smoothness of Motion30
Chapter 6Yo35
Chapter 7Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Line40
Chapter 8The Doctor of Discovery44
Chapter 9Real World Rising54
Chapter 10Forever Familiar, Forever Unknown61
Chapter 11Some Famous Functions75
Chapter 12Speed of Sorts92
Chapter 13Speed, Strange Speed106
Chapter 14Paris Days118
Chapter 15Prague Interlude129
Chapter 16Memory of Motion155
Chapter 17The Dimpled Shoulder173
Chapter 18Wrong Way Rolle190
Chapter 19The Mean Value Theorem198
Chapter 20The Song of Igor217
Chapter 21Area244
Chapter 22Those Legos Vanish252
Chapter 23The Integral Wishes to Compute an Area268
Chapter 24The Integral Wishes to Become a Function274
Chapter 25Between the Living and the Dead282
Chapter 26A Farewell to Continuity304
Epilogue311
Acknowledgments313
Index315
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