For Dirk Struik: Scientific, Historical and Political Essays in Honor of Dirk J. Struik (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (15))

It is fitting that Professor Dirk Jan Struik be greeted with this melange of mathematical, scientific, historical, sociological and political essays. The authors are also appropriately varied: different countries, outlooks, religions, generations, and we suppose - of course we did not as- different politics too. Many more would have joined us, we know, but the good friends in this book make a fine and representative assembly of the intersection of two (mathematical!) classes: affectionately respect­ ful admirers of Dirk Struik, and the best thinkers of this troubled century. Struik has been among the most steadfast supporters of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, that discussion group which we have been holding at Boston University since 1960, but his luminous collaboration has been welcome, in Boston and Cambridge, for nearly five decades among mathematicians, physicists, philosophical and political thinkers, and especially among the students. It has not mattered whether they have been his own students or not, whether at M.LT. or elsewhere, whether scholars or dropouts, nature-lovers or book worms, anarchists or Republicans, Catholics or Unitarians, Communists or communists, prim or liberated. No doubt he has his preferences! But the main thing for Struik has been to educate and respect the other person. Front Matter....Pages I-XXVII Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Lemniscate of Bernoulli....Pages 3-14 Summation of Series of Fractions Depending Upon the Roots of the Airy Function....Pages 15-19 Wave Propagation in Non-Viscous Fluids....Pages 21-24 Polyhedral Numbers....Pages 25-35 Materialist Mathematics....Pages 37-66 Skew Curves Setting Up a Null System in Space....Pages 67-74 Über Ein Beispiel zur Unbestimmten Analytik und Seine Allgemeine Bedeutung....Pages 75-89 Remarks on Two-By-Two Matric Semigroups....Pages 91-99 A Unified Approach to Hypernumbers....Pages 101-119 Some Remarks on the Concept of Limit....Pages 121-129 La Notion de Fonction Chez Condorcet....Pages 131-139 Front Matter....Pages 141-141 The Modern Use of Historical Chinese Solar Observations....Pages 143-146 The Second Part of Chapter 5 of the De Arte Mensurandi by Johannes De Muris....Pages 147-167 Isaac Newton, The Calculus of Variations, and the Design of Ships....Pages 169-187 The Impact of Von Staudt’s Foundations of Geometry....Pages 189-200 Georg Samuel Dörffel....Pages 201-203 Observational, Rational and Scientific Medicine in Mexico....Pages 205-211 History of Science: A Subject for the Frustrated....Pages 213-224 The Relation between Eudoxus’ Theory of Proportions and Dedekind’s Theory of Cuts....Pages 225-243 Rheticus as Editor of Sacrobosco....Pages 245-248 Front Matter....Pages 141-141 Is Euclid on the Skids?....Pages 249-260 John Pell’s English Edition of J. H. Rahn’s Teutsche Algebra ....Pages 261-274 Could the Specific Heat of the Elements Have Contributed to the Discovery of the Periodic System?....Pages 275-292 Front Matter....Pages 293-293 Die Alexander-Von-Humboldt-Forschung an der Akademie der Wissenschaften der D.D.R. — Ergebnisse und Ziele....Pages 295-305 Ethics and Science....Pages 307-323 A Religion of Earth....Pages 325-343 Some Heretical Ideas With Respect to Mathematics and Physics....Pages 345-348 A Note on Robert Hodes....Pages 349-352 Aims and Methods of Scientific Research....Pages 353-364 The Concept of ‘Simplicity’ in the Physico-Mathematical Sciences....Pages 365-371 Should Science Survive Its Success?....Pages 373-389 Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will....Pages 391-402 The Accelerator and the Virgin: The Rise & Fall of Two Cults....Pages 403-415 A Note on the Concept of Scientific Practice....Pages 417-433 Ideology, Expression, and Mediation....Pages 435-463 Is Science Rational?....Pages 465-475 On The Philosophical Meaning of Observational Errors....Pages 477-490 Front Matter....Pages 491-491 Falsification in History....Pages 493-499 The Evolution of Black Nationalism (1971)....Pages 501-529 The Secret of Jheronimus Bosch....Pages 531-546 Front Matter....Pages 491-491 Self-Determination in Theory and Practice....Pages 547-559 The Appeal of Marxism in the United States....Pages 561-573 Relative Values and the Quest for Socio-Political Standards....Pages 575-580 Dirk Struik and the Sociology of Science....Pages 581-591 What is Burgerlijk?....Pages 593-604 American Anti-Imperialism and The Russian Revolution....Pages 605-616 Lenin and the Americans at Kuzbas....Pages 617-634 Pre-School Education and its Role in Social Change: A New Zealand Example....Pages 635-643 Toward a Critique of Economics....Pages 645-652 Back Matter....Pages 653-657 It is fitting that Professor Dirk Jan Struik be greeted with this melange of mathematical, scientific, historical, sociological and political essays. The authors are also appropriately varied: different countries, outlooks, religions, generations, and we suppose - of course we did not as- different politics too. Many more would have joined us, we know, but the good friends in this book make a fine and representative assembly of the intersection of two (mathematical!) classes: affectionately respectƯ ful admirers of Dirk Struik, and the best thinkers of this troubled century. Struik has been among the most steadfast supporters of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, that discussion group which we have been holding at Boston University since 1960, but his luminous collaboration has been welcome, in Boston and Cambridge, for nearly five decades among mathematicians, physicists, philosophical and political thinkers, and especially among the students. It has not mattered whether they have been his own students or not, whether at M. LT. or elsewhere, whether scholars or dropouts, nature-lovers or book worms, anarchists or Republicans, Catholics or Unitarians, Communists or communists, prim or liberated. No doubt he has his preferences! But the main thing for Struik has been to educate and respect the other person