[Revised entry by Mary Domski on April 7, 2025.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
To speak of Rene Descartes’ contributions to the history of mathematics is to speak of his La Geometrie (1637), a short tract included with the anonymously published Discourse on Method. In La Geometrie, Descartes details a groundbreaking program for geometrical problem-solving – what he refers to as a “geometrical calculus” (calcul geometrique) – that rests on a distinctive approach to the relationship between algebra…
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