"In Sorbière's day, European thinkers and intellectuals of widely divergent religious and political affiliations campa…"

"On the one side were ranged the forces of hierarchy and order—Jesuits, Hobbesians, French Royal Courtiers, and High C…"

"[Joseph-Louis Lagrange's] lectures on differential calculus form the basis of his Theorie des fonctions analytiques w…"

"Nothing is easier... than to fit a deceptively smooth curve to the discontinuities of mathematical invention. Everyth…"

"Fermat applied his method of tangents to many difficult problems. The method has the form of the now-standard method …"

"Descartes' method of finding tangents and normals... was not a happy inspiration. It was quickly superseded by that o…"

"Archimedes was the earliest thinker to develop the apparatus of an infinite series with a finite limit ...starting on…"

"The fundamental definitions of the calculus, those of the derivative and integral, are now so clearly stated in textb…"

"The precision of statement and the facility of application which the rules of the calculus early afforded were in a m…"

"Nothing in Descartes' work led directly to Leibniz's calculus, but Descartes' discoveries in mathematics were certain…"