On the Nature of Calculus

Alfred North Whitehead
19 pages (2008/1898); 236KB download
WOWIO Books; ISBN: WOWIO-00405

DESCRIPTION

This essay provides an overview of the mathematical reasoning of calculus, discussing signs, definition of a calculus, equivalence, operations, substitutive schemes, conventional schemes and uninterpretable forms.

The essay is part of a larger work on “Universal Algebra” in which Whitehead states: “The ideal of mathematics should be to erect a calculus to facilitate reasoning in connection with every province of thought, or of external experience, in which the succession of thoughts, or of events can be definitely ascertained and precisely stated. So that all serious thought which is not philosophy, or inductive reasoning, or imaginative literature, shall be mathematics developed by means of a calculus.”