"Unfortunately, the mechanical way in which calculus sometimes is taught fails to present the subject as the outcome of a dramatic intellectual struggle which has lasted for twenty-five hundred years or more, which is deeply rooted in many phases of human endeavors and which will continue as long as man strives to understand himself as well as nature. Teachers, students, and scholars who really want to comprehend the forces and appearances of science must have some understanding of the present aspect of knowledge as a result of historical evolution. ...The book ought to reach every teacher of mathematics; then it certainly will have a strong influence towards a healthy reform in the teaching of mathematics."
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Original Language: English
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R. Courant, forward to Carl B. Boyer's The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (1949, 1959).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
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History of mathematics
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