Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2-5-2012

Abstract

"Though the De Methodis results, for its essential structure and content, from a re-elaboration of a previous unfinished treatise composed in the Fall of 1666—now known, after Whiteside, as The October 1666 tract on fluxions ([22], I, pp. 400-448)—, the introduction of the term ‘fluxion’ goes together with an important conceptual change concerned with Newton’s understanding of his own achievements. I shall argue that this change marks a crucial step in the origins of analysis, conceived as an autonomous mathematical theory."

Comments

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of a chapter accepted for publication in Andrew Janiak and Eric Schliesser (Eds.), Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays. This version may not exactly replicate the final published version.

Copyright

Cambridge University Press

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