"The mathematicians of the period under discussion were wont to propound to one another problems for solution. These... were... public challenges and served to excite and to maintain that fermentation which is necessary for the pursuit of science. The challenges... were continued down to the beginning of the eighteenth century [in] Europe, and really did not cease until the rise of the Academies which fulfilled the same end... partly by the union of the knowledge of their various members, partly by the intercourse which they maintained... and... by the publication of their memoirs, which served to disseminate the new discoveries and observations..."
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Lectures on Elementary Mathematics
Lectures on Elementary Mathematics (1898) is the earliest English translation of Joseph Louis Lagrange's 1795 publication, Leçons élémentaires sur les mathematiques, containing a series of lectures delivered the same year at the Ecole Normale. The work was translated and edited by Thomas J. McCormack, and a second edition, from which the following quotes are taken, appeared in 1901.
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