Evolution of Mathematical Concepts: An Elementary Study

by Raymond L. Wilder

Accessible to students and relevant to specialists, this remarkable book by a prominent educator offers a unique perspective on the evolutionary development of mathematics. Rather than conducting a survey of the history or philosophy of mathematics, Raymond L. Wilder envisions mathematics as a broad cultural phenomenon. His treatment examines and illustrates how such concepts as number and length were affected by historic and social events.
Starting with a brief consideration of preliminary notions, this study explores the early evolution of numbers, the evolution of geometry, and the conquest of the infinite as embodied by real numbers. A detailed look at the processes of evolution concludes with an examination of the evolutionary aspects of modern mathematics.

Genres: History, Mathematics

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1968

Reviews

[Neal Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts well with ancient, in particular Babylonian, mathematics and the evolution of ideas such as the decimal marker and irrational numbers. Later, though, it spends too much time on repeating material, such as Cantor’s diagonal method, which is likely to be known to readers and, anyway, doesn’t directly address the evolution of ideas such as the infinite. Disappointingly, there’s virtually nothing on negative and imaginary numbers. Despite the repeated use of phrases like “cultural stress”, they’re not developed into anything more than tags.