Talk:Infinitesimal calculus

message: :Infinitesimal calculus is an area of mathematics pioneered by Gottfried Leibniz based on the concept of infinitesimals, as opposed to the calculus of Isaac Newton, which is based upon the concept of the limit.
Is it really true that Isaac Newton had the concept of limit?  I tend to think of that as a 19th-century innovation. Michael Hardy 20:58, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

message: The proposal to merge this with non-standard calculus doesn't make sense.  Non-standard calculus did not emerge until the 1950s; this article is about something introduced by Leibniz in the 17th century. Michael Hardy 21:48, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: infinitesimals were put onto a rigorous basis by nonstandard calculus --MarSch 15:18, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Everybody knows that, but it would be absurd to limit the topic to its rigorous formulation when the non-rigorous version played a far more prominent role in the history of the subject. Michael Hardy 21:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Both infinitesimal calculus and non-standard calculus have changed considerably since 2005.  Since calculus using Robinson's infinitesimals is a natural continuation of what was known historically as infinitesimal calculus, a case could be made for merging non-standard calculus into infinitesimal calculus, which is obviously the more appealing title. Tkuvho (talk) 14:18, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

text: I second this proposal.  Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: In mathematical logic, Charles Sanders Peirce had interesting  writings about infinitesimals. Secondary literature includes the mathematics historians Joseph W. Dauben, Carolyn Eisele, John L. Bell; c.f. the wider discussions of Peirce's mathematics (and mathematical logic) by the mathematical logicians by Hilary Putnam (e.g. in Peirce's "Reasoning and the Logic of Things") and Jaakko Hintikka (e.g. in "Rule of Reason").
See also:
* Peirce on Infinitesimals |Author(s): P. T. Sagal | Source: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring, 1978), pp. 132-135 | Published by: Indiana University Press
* The Genesis of the Peircean Continuum |Moore, Matthew E. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, Volume 43, Number 3, Summer 2007, pp. 425-469 (Article)  | DOI: 10.1353/csp.2007.0037 
Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 15:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Charles Sanders Peirce]] 

message: Trovatore and tkuvho have come to a tentative agreement that IF it can be verified that the term "infinitesimal calculus" can be documented to be used in a historical sense to describe the calculus using infinitesimals prior to Weierstrassian reform, then this page can be turned into a disambiguation page with perhaps three items: (a) calculus; (b) history of calculus; (c) infinitesimal calculus in the sense of Henle's textbook.  Tkuvho (talk) 11:07, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  disambiguation 

message: The 9th edition of the EB  has a 68 page article about "Infinitesimal Calculus".WFPM (talk) 20:03, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any more details about this?  When did it come out?  what's in the article that's not in the earlier editions?  Is there an electronic link?  Tkuvho (talk) 03:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Encyclopaedia Britannica

message: Reading this article is like wading through treacle.
Please tidy up the language used to make it accessible to more people.
Calculus is not a complicated subject if it is taught well. The text in this article may be accurate but if it fails to pass on understanding it is not doing the job an encyclopedia should do. 
Best wishes,  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.20.167.150 (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Your comment is so common that we (WikiProject MATH) have a templated response for it; suffice it to say that the "infinitesimal calculus" is so complicated that, although created in the 1660s, mathematicians didn't get it right until 1960.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 06:47, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Nonsense. That is purely your opinion. Not every mathematician accepts non-standard analysis. 197.64.207.71 (talk) 08:16, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

text: I agree with Arthur.  Which aspects of the page does the IP find inaccessible?  Is it the lede or the later sections?  Tkuvho (talk) 08:22, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs cleaning up for readability 

message: This was viewed 15000 times yesterday.  Any idea why?  xkcd does not seem to be it. Tkuvho (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  15000 views 

message: The lead says:
:Infinitesimal calculus is the part of mathematics concerned with finding tangent lines to curves, areas under curves, minima and maxima, and other geometric and analytic problems
This is incorrect. The "part of mathematics concerned with finding tangent lines to curves, areas under curves, minima and maxima, and other geometric and analytic problems" is called calculus.
Infinitesimal calculus is just one approach to calculus.
--Redaktor (talk) 14:00, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: @Redaktor, you may wish to consult this text by Dieudonné which uses the term "infinitesimal calculus" in the sense of "the calculus". Tkuvho (talk) 12:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

text: See also this review.  Tkuvho (talk) 12:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading lead