CARNOT, Lazare. Réflexions sur la métaphysique du calcul infinitésimal. 1797.
CARNOT, Lazare.
Réflexions sur la métaphysique du calcul infinitésimal.
Paris, Duprat, 1797.
12mo (183x114 mm), 80 pages and one plate. binding : End of nineteenth century quarter morocco. Gilt flat spine. Light waterstain.
Rare first edition, complete with the folding plate.
references: DSB [III, p.75 : " his 'Réflexions sur la métaphysique du calcul infinitésimal', first published in 1797, (...) frankly acknowledged the difficulties that infinitesimal analysis raises for common sens and although it was reserved to the reforms initiated by Cauchy, Bolzano and Gauss to put the calculus on a rigorous footing, Carnot's justification evidently answered for well over a century to the needs of a public that wished to understand its own use of the calculus. The genious of the infinitesimal calculus, in Carnot's account, lay in its capacity to compensate in its own procedures for errors that it deliberately admitted into the process of computation for the purpose of faciliting a solution."].
Price : 850 €
