Historical Introduction:

A Brief Account
This, therefore, is Mathematics; she reminds you of the invisible form of the soul; she

gives life to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she

brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion and ignorance which is ours

by birth. ---Proclus, c. 450

Cum Deus Calculat Fit Mundus.

(As God calculates, so the world is created ). ---Leibniz, c. 1700

The word mathematics derives from the Greek word mathema, meaning knowledge,
cognition, understanding, or perception, suggesting that the study of what we now call
mathematics began by asking questions about the world. In fact, the historical evidence
suggests that mathematics began about 2700 years ago as an attempt to comprehend
nature. Unfortunately, in most mathematical expositions, historical motivations and
contexts are often sacrificed. In this new edition, the authors continue to address this
problem by including the discussion of historical and contextual material where appro-
priate. Therefore, before we dive into the mathematics of Vector Calculus, we briefly
discuss the development of mathematics prior to and including the discovery of calculus.

Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek Mathematics

It is generally acknowledged that mathematics developed in the seventh and sixth cen-
turies B.C., somewhat after the Greeks had developed a uniform alphabet. This is not to
say, however, that mathematical knowledge did not exist before the Greeks. In fact,
the Egyptians and Babylonians knew many empirical facts centuries before the rise of
the Greek civilization. For example, they could solve quadratic equations, compute the
areas of certain geometric figures, such as squares, rectangles, and triangles, and they
possessed a reasonably good formula for the area of a circle, using the value of 3.16 for
π . They also knew how to compute certain volumes like the size of cubes, rectangles,
rectangular solids, cones, cylinders, and (not surprisingly) pyramids. The ancients were
also acquainted with the Pythagorean theorem (at least empirically).
The Greeks, who settled throughout the Mediterranean, must have played an
important role in preserving and spreading the mathematical knowledge of the Egyp-
tians and the Babylonians. However, the Greeks were aware that there were different
formulas for the same area or volumes. For example, the Babylonians had one formula
for the volume of a frustum of a pyramid with a square base, and the Egyptians had
another (see Figure 1).
It is not surprising that the Egyptians (with the experience in pyramid construc-
tion) had the correct formula. Now, given two formulas, it was clear that only one could

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xiv Historical Introduction

b figure 1 Volume of a frustum of a pyramid with a

square base: V = 13 h (a 2 + ab+ b 2 ).

h a
P

be correct. But how could one decide such an answer? Certainly it is not a question
for debate, as would be the question of the quality of works of art. It is likely that the
necessity to determine the answers to such questions is what led to the development of
mathematical proof and to the method of deductive reasoning.
The person usually credited for the invention of rigorous mathematical proof
was a merchant named Thales of Miletus (624–548 B.C.). It is Thales who is said
to be the creator of Greek geometry, and it was this geometry (earth measure) as an
abstract mathematical theory (rather than a collection of empirical facts) supported by
rigorous deductive proofs that was one of the turning points of scientific thinking. It led
to the creation of the first mathematical model for physical phenomena.
For example, one of the most beautiful geometric theories developed during
antiquity was that of conic sections. See Figure 2.
Conics include the straight line, circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola. Their discov-
ery is attributed to Menaechmus, a member of the school of the great Greek philosopher
Plato. Plato, a student of Socrates, founded his school The Academy (see Figure 3) in a sa-
cred area of the ancient city of Athens, called Hekadameia (after the hero Hekademos).
All later academies obtained their name from this institution, which existed without
interruption for about 1000 years until it was dissolved by the Roman Emperor
Justinian in 529 C.E.

figure 2 The conic sections: (A) hyperbola,

(B) parabola, (C) ellipse, (D) circle.
C

D
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Historical Introduction xv

figure 3 Plato’s Academy

(mosaic found in Pompeii, Villa
of T. Siminius Stephanus,
86 × 85 cm, Naples,
Archaeological Museum). With
certainty the seven men have
been identified as Plato (third
from the left) and six other
philosophers, who are talking
about the universe, the celestial
spheres, and the stars. The
mosaic shows Plato’s Academy,
with the city of Athens in the
background. It is probably a
copy (from the first century B .C.)
of a Hellenistic painting.

Plato suggested the following problem to his students:

Explain the motion of the heavenly bodies by some geometrical theory.

Why was this a question of interest and puzzlement for the Greeks? Observed
from the Earth, these motions appear to be quite complicated. The motions of the
sun and the moon can be roughly described as circular with constant speed, but the de-
viations from the circular orbit were troublesome to the Greeks and they felt challenged
to find an explanation for these irregularities. The observed orbits of the planets are
even more complicated, because as they go through a revolution, they appear to reverse
direction several times.
The Greeks sought to understand this apparently wild motion by means of their
geometry. Eudoxus, Hipparchus, and then Apollonius of Perga (262–190 B.C.) suggested
that the celestial orbits could be explained by combinations of circular motion (that is,
through the construction of curves called epicycles traced out by circles moving on
other circles). This idea was to become the most important astronomical theory of
the next two thousand years. This theory, known by us through the writings of the
Greek astronomer Ptolemy of Alexandria, ultimately becomes known as the “Ptolemaic
theory.” See Figures 4 and 5.
Most of Greek geometry was codified by Euclid in his Elements (of Mathematics).
Actually the Elements consist of thirteen books, in which Euclid collected most of
the mathematical knowledge of his age (circa 300 B.C.), transforming it into a lucid,
logically developed masterpiece. In addition to the Elements, some of Euclid’s other
writings were also handed down to us, including his Optics and the Catoptrica (theory
of mirrors).
The success of Greek mathematics had a profound effect on views of nature. The
Platonists, or followers of Plato, distinguished between the world of ideas and the world
of physical objects. Plato was the first to propose that ultimate truth or understanding
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xvi Historical Introduction

figure 4 Woodcut from Georg von Peurbach’s

Theoricae novae planetarum, edited by Oronce
Fine as a teaching text for the University of Paris
(1515). It was the canonical description of the
heavens until the end of the sixteenth century,
and even Copernicus was to a large extent
under the influence of this work. Peurbach
described the solid sphere representations of
Ptolemaic planetary models, which he probably
based on Ibn al-Haytham’s work “On the
configuration of the world” (translated into Latin
in the thirteenth century). The same frontispiece
was used for the Sacrosbosco edition of the first
four books of Euclid’s Elements (in excerpts),
which appeared under the title Textus de
Sphaera in Paris (1521).

figure 5 Ptolemy observing the stars with

a quadrant, together with an allegoric
Astronomia. (From Gregorius Reish, Margarita
Philosophica nova, Strasbourg, 1512, an early
compendium of philosophy and science.) In
those days, Ptolemy was often depicted as a
king, because he was erroneously thought to be
descended from the Ptolemaic dynasty that
ruled Egypt after Alexander.

could not come from the material world, which is constantly subject to change, but only
from mathematical models or constructs. Thus, infallible knowledge could be attained
only through mathematics. Plato not only wished to use mathematics in the study of
nature, but he actually went so far as to attempt to substitute mathematics for nature.
For Plato, reality lies only within the realm of ideas, especially mathematical ideas.
Not everyone in antiquity agreed with this point of view. Aristotle, a student of Plato,
criticized Plato’s reduction of science to the study of mathematics. Aristotle thought that
the study of the material world was one’s primary source of reality. Despite Aristotle’s
critique, the view that mathematical laws governed the universe took a firm hold on
classical thought. The search for the mathematical laws of nature was underway.
After the death of Archimedes in 212 B.C., Greek civilization went into a period of
slow decline. The final blow to Greek civilization came in 640 A.D. with the Moslem