⏚ Antoine Chambert-Loir on Nostr: This book brings many details, anecdotes, on a rich topic, and that gives it some ...

This book brings many details, anecdotes, on a rich topic, and that gives it some appeal. However, I am extremely doubtful of the mere project to summarize 3000 years of mathematics in one book, the more if it means conflating so many diverse mathematical traditions into one word (analysis). I skimmed through the Leibniz part, and I don't see a clear discussion of what infinitesimals meant to him (a useful fiction, did he wrote), but my reading may have been too hazy. As usual, the question with history is whether we want it to validate our own practices, to color them with the gilded dust of ages, or whether we are truly interested in what people did, why and how they did it.