{"title":"Fabricius's theory for Mars: The model that shocked Kepler","authors":"Christián C. Carman","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.05.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.05.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>David Fabricius is recognized in the history of astronomy for his role in the discoveries of sunspots and the first variable star. As the around 50 letters between them show, he also played a significant role as Kepler's interlocutor when the latter was writing <em>Astronomia Nova</em>. One year before the publication of <em>Astronomia Nova</em>, Fabricius shared with Kepler a new model for Mars that he had developed. The model shocked Kepler because, using the traditional tools of circles and uniform motion, Fabricius had been able to find a model as accurate as Kepler's model involving his first two laws. The official story, based on the reconstruction of Fabricius's model that Apelt made in 1852, asserts that Kepler need not worry because, in fact, he misinterpreted the model. The true model that Fabricius proposed was not predictively accurate. In this paper I offer a new interpretation of Fabricius's model that shows that Kepler did indeed have reason to worry since Fabricius's model was extraordinarily accurate.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"69 ","pages":"Pages 1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negatives as fictions in 16th and 17th century mathematics","authors":"David Rabouin","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.09.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.09.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The use of “negative” entities is a fact attested in various mathematical practices across various contexts since antiquity. Although we now have a better knowledge of this history in its complexity and its richness, many phenomena occurring in it are still blurred and oversimplified by the retrospective look we tend to posit on it under the heading of the history of negative <em>numbers</em>. In the first section, I detail several historical studies relying on a specific kind of conceptualization in terms of “domain extension” and point to several of their shortcomings. In the second section, I propose to turn to the actor's categories and put particular emphasis on the fact that negative entities were conceived as “fictitious” entities. In the third section, I show how this context allows a different reading of the various discussions and reflections on negatives occurring in the second half of the 17<sup>th</sup> century.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"69 ","pages":"Pages 41-61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Withdrawal notice to: Mathematical cognition related to the large numbers in early societies: A study based on 5th-century Buddhist Commentaries in Sri Lanka. [Hist. Math. 67 (2024) 1–12]","authors":"Chandana Jayawardana","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article has been withdrawn at the request of the editor and publisher.</div><div>The publisher regrets that an error occurred which led to the premature publication of this paper. This error bears no reflection on the article or its authors. The publisher apologizes to the authors and the readers for this unfortunate error.</div><div>The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at (<span><span>https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal</span><svg><path></path></svg></span>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"69 ","pages":"Page 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Additive and subtractive as relational entities in the algebra of al-Zanjānī (and his predecessors)","authors":"Eleonora Sammarchi","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.09.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.09.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the texts of the arithmetical-algebraic tradition initiated by al-Karajī (11th c.), the terms of a composite algebraic expression are considered to be positive or negative only in the sense of relational entities. Indeed, within the rules for operating with these algebraic expressions, additives and subtractives represent operands, and tabular methods allow one to compute with subtractives more freely. The strategies adopted for impossible problems further confirm the relational nature of these entities. In my article, I examine these aspects by considering the work of al-Zanjānī (13th c.) and of his predecessors al-Karajī and al-Samaw'al.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"69 ","pages":"Pages 22-40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143136683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Euclidean terms in European languages, 1482–1703","authors":"Benjamin Wardhaugh","doi":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.07.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.hm.2024.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper reports on the degree of lexical instability in European translations of the <em>Elements</em> published up to the end of the seventeenth century. As well as the intrinsic interest of the formation and stabilization of a Euclidean tradition in these languages, the wide visibility of Euclidean material in the period makes it likely that the terminological choices made by early translators were influential in the wider formation of mathematical vocabularies in the languages concerned. The paper shows that instability was distributed unevenly across languages and semantic areas, and reports where the pockets of higher and lower instability were located.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51061,"journal":{"name":"Historia Mathematica","volume":"68 ","pages":"Pages 22-37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086024000739/pdfft?md5=ca4989eaae120bfbaa21ae8abdc676e0&pid=1-s2.0-S0315086024000739-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142312353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}