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Title: A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis by John L. Bell ISBN: 0-521-62401-0 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 July, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An unusual but very interesting book.
Comment: I have to compare this book with another one which I recently bought: "Infinitesimal Calculus" by James M. Henle and Eugene M. Kleinberg. Both books are basically the same in that they use the concept of infinitesimals to provide a more intuitively satisfying basis for the concepts of calculus than the common, "delta/epsilon" limit approach. Yet the two could not be more different in the way they go about it.
Henle and Kleinberg's book uses a concept of infinitesimals developed by Abraham Robinson, known as "nonstandard analysis." In this system, an expanded number system, the "hyperreal number system," is created, which obeys almost all the same rules as the real number system but includes infinitesimals (numbers different from zero but smaller in absolute value than any other real number), as well as infinite numbers (larger than any real number) and finite but nonstandard numbers. By contrast, the "smooth infinitesimal analysis" used in this book has no infinite numbers, and does not obey the normal laws of logic (in particular, the law of the excluded middle). Bell is well aware of the difference between these two approaches, and gives detailed and valuable comparisons between them in this book.
Oddly, nothing could be further than infinitesimals from the ideas of the intuitionist mathematicians like L. E. J. Brouwer, yet Bell's logical system is based on the modifications to logic which Brouwer had to make so that his intuitionistic program could work. And Bell refers to his logical system as intuitionistic.
My own personal feeling is that nonstandard analysis has the merits of the logic being familiar and of its being based on the extension of the real number system in a compatible manner, but smooth infinitesimal analysis makes the mathematics easier to _do_ (as, in nonstandard analysis, it is continually necessary to extract the standard part of a nonstandard number, and a corresponding step is unnecessary in smooth infinitesimal analysis). So both have their merit.
Another contrast with Henle & Kleinberg's book is that the other book ignores applications, while this book is strongly oriented toward the use of calculus in physical applications.
I was tempted to give this book 5 stars, but I find the mathematics in some places rather dense and hard to follow, which was my reason for deducting one star. But I am glad to own both of the two books, this one and Henle & Kleinberg's.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Mathematical Jewel of the Nile and the Stone of Philosophy
Comment: I originally came accross this beautiful text in 98 at a bookstore when it was first released. I purchased another copy recently when I could not locate my original. A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis has become one of my prided favourites in a collection of books extending from all fields of mathematics; probability, measure theory, polytope theory, and quantum physics, cosmology, astronomy to ontology, phenomenology, molecular genetics and the neurosciences. Although I have never studied infinitesimal calculus from the older publications in relation to differentials and Classical logistics ie. Introduction to Infinitesimal Calculus - G.W. Caunt. Such analysis is unneccesary for an understanding of the most revolutionary discoveries made in the field that will become the norm for all future progress. Dr. Bell's primer is a textual jewel that not only re-founds Leibniz Principle of Continuity on a rigorous ground but extends the very categorical basis of the instantaneous rate of change that is the foundational core of the differential calculus. Bell shows us that by a revision of the Law of Exluded Middlle ie. as a function of discontinuous numbers (either 0 or not 0) cannot rationally exist in a real system Rn that is derived as a smooth world S (a smooth rather than rigid real line R system), provides continuous equations for physics and philosophical axioms. Leibniz, co-founder of the differential calculus and Classical infinitesimals, delineated the Principle of Continuity expresessing that all processes that are rational and real, and therefor numbers, should allways be continuous in nature and hence never rigid or disharmonic. Leibniz also states allongside the Principle of Continuity; the Principle of Reason, which the modern Heidegger states is the grounding "Principle of all Principles", for existentials and ontological points.
Bell's original concept of the Smooth World is really a kind of exponential set for all real Euclidean spaces from which the very reasoning of mathematical truth value can be deduced to simple algebra. The primer makes it clear and concise how to utillize the axiomatic method of smooth analysis that I see far-reaching potential for more rational, truthfull; philosophy, logic, and physics of all forms. By simply excluding the Law of Excluded Middlle from the calculus and doing much more pure calculus and logic, numbers themselves have a much more continuous and fluid nature as non-rigidity elements for fields and surfaces. Bell's usage of the intuistionistic logic and his own smooth worlds model has found applications recently to economic thought such as those discovered by K. Prasad.
A Primer of Infinitesimal Analysis can be regarded as the manifesto for the future of foundational calculus that is a new synthesis of logical mathematical modeling. This work may not precisely be regarded primarily as infinitesimal calculus or analysis in the earlier developed models (with regards to discontinuous and differentiated numerical basis'.) Rather Bells propositions through smooth worlds over the real analytic basis provide an interpretation for that basis that has the applicative result of something called a microvector for things might I suggest: affine quantum computing and quantum unification of the light-cone metric into quantum gravity within fractal measureable smooth sets. The physicist Weyl was an adherent to infinitesimal concepts in his affine models of the projective metric, and this primer is the spark of things to come.
All math and science enthusiasts including philosophers and logicians should have a copy of this book at hand; it is a fun and intuitive book to read cover to cover and it is also a manifest treasure of knowledge you can apply to time, consciousness, and interpret how things may really work in nature.
Rating: 5
Summary: Lovely Book
Comment: Many students "get" the geometrical interpretation of infinitesimals, only to have their intuition dashed in a flurry of epsilon-deltas! Once having gone through this approach, any original enthusiasm is frequently lost. Professor Bell has brought that enthusiasm back, in this small yet lovely book.
Have you ever thought about the fact that, in the Real Numbers, there can be no point touching another point? Therefore points are by definition discreet, and cannot be the basis of a continuum! If this interests you, get the book. Also covered in it are applications to geometry and mechanics, multidimensional calculus, synthetic geometry, and infinitesimal analysis's relation to non-standard analysis (via Abraham Robinson), among other topics. All in less than 150 pages.
This presentation is rigorous, yet simple and clean (it does demand some thinking on the reader's part!). Can one truly appreciate the beauty of this simple approach without having gone through the standard hell of the "modern" limit-defined presentation of the calculus? You be the judge.
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Title: Non-standard Analysis by Abraham Robinson ISBN: 0691044902 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 08 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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Title: Infinitesimal Calculus by James M. Henle, Eugene M. Kleinberg ISBN: 0486428869 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Lectures on the Hyperreals: An Introduction to Nonstandard Analysis (Graduate Texts in Mathematics, Vol 188) by Robert Goldblatt, S. Axler, F. W. Gehring, P. R. Halmos ISBN: 038798464X Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $64.95 |
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Title: Nonstandard Analysis by Alain M. Robert ISBN: 0486432793 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 17 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Abraham Robinson by Joseph Warren Dauben, Benoit B. Mandelbrot ISBN: 069105911X Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 26 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $42.50 |
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