Logarithmic, trigonometric and other mathematical tables aroused particular interest throughout the 18th century, due to scientific and economic reasons. Although the German states lacked the economy that urged production of such tables, many were printed and conceived in the late 18th century. J.H. Lambert had pointed out the importance of logarithmic and factorising tables in many of his works, and the mathematical community in Germany likewise responded to his call for tables. Apart from (...)
Guillaume Gosselin’s treatise, known as De Arte Magna (Paris, 1577), is a short and quite simple work written by someone who is a typical algebraist in Renaissance France. Gosselin heard about new methods in algebra from mathematicians who worked just before him; after making them his own, he wanted them to be taught and wrote them down. Gosselin’s book is very dependent on Tartaglia’s Arithmetic (Venice, 1556), which Gosselin translated into French in 1578 and on Diophantus’ Arithmetica, (...)
This paper will consider and explore the philosophically interesting aspects of some non-standard, empirical approaches to mathematical proof: number crunching and probabilistic proving. The former pertains to the practice of checking cases of universal statements, while the latter covers notions central to contemporary computer science such as interactive, zero-knowledge and probabilistically checkable proof. Techniques like thes have come to us in a time where, in mathematical research, (...)
