"Longomontanus and Byrgius, are all whom Dr Hutton can find to represent his learned calculators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who anticipated or coincided with Napier in the discovery. ...But he is contradicted by the history of science... and by every philosopher of greatest name... ...[O]ur philosopher's invention... removed a pressure, long and severely felt, and which might have crushed the temple of science, had that not possessed such a pillar as Kepler. To use the expressions of a distinguished writer, " What all mathematicians were now wishing for, the genius of Neper enabled him to discover; and the invention of Logarithms introduced into the calculations of trigonometry a degree of simplicity and ease, which no man had been so sanguine as to expect." Kepler, Ursine, Speidell, Gunter, Briggs, Vlacq, [Petrus] Cugerus, Cavalieri, Wolff, Wallis, Halley, Keill, and a host of others, all bear witness against Dr Hutton, in the honourable and enthusiastic manner they acknowledge Napier as the only author of that revolution in science."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Quote Ref: Review of Woodhouse's Trigonometry, Edin. Review (1810) Vol. XVII. p. 124.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometry
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
History of trigonometry
begins with the early study of triangles, traced to the , in () and . Trigonometry was also prevalent in Kushite mathematics.
130 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by History of trigonometry →
Related Quotes
"Similarly to the spread of the Indian place-value system, Indian trigonometry came to Europe via the Arab world, for …"
"[I]n 1575 Western Europe had recovered most of the major mathematical works of antiquity now extant. Arabic algebra h…"
"At its higher levels the golden age of Muslim civilization was both an immense scientific success and a exceptional r…"
"As in the rest of mathematical sciences, so in trigonometry, were the Arabs pupils of the Hindus…"
"Chapter X., which follows, is on the obliquity of the ecliptic... The next, XI., XII. contain spherical geometry and …"
"Euler wrote... Introductio in Analysin infinitorum, 1748, which was intended to serve as an introduction to pure anal…"
"The development of Indian trigonometry, based on sine as against chord of the Greeks was another of 's achievements w…"
"The second part of the book... contains an exposition of the first principles of the theory of complex quantities; hi…"
"The idea of the logarithm probably had its source in the use of... trigonometric formulas that transformed multiplica…"
"Isaac Newton... went to school at Grantham and in 1661 came up as a subsizar to Trinity. ...He had not read any mathe…"