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What are some of the oldest books available on Calculus? I'm curious to see how the old teaching and explanatory styles compare to modern ones.

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3 Answers 3

up vote 7 down vote accepted

You mean like Newton's "Method of Fluxions"?

Or perhaps de l'Hospital's "Analyse des infiniment petits"?

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Precisely. Thank you for your reply. – Subtle Array Jan 19 '12 at 7:18
@SubtleArray, oh did you meant that old? – lhf Jan 19 '12 at 12:45
while I upvoted this, it is not fair to compare "explanatory style" in Newton's fluxions to any modern calculus book. For one thing, the standard for rigour evolved quite a bit in the past 300 years. – Willie Wong Jan 19 '12 at 13:03
Apologies for my bad grammar. I more or less meant "how the ideas were outlined." I wanted to compare the differences between how Calculus was originally explained to how it's explained today. – Subtle Array Jan 19 '12 at 19:44

Wikipedia lists these important publications in calculus

Edit: Related is this link that has a reference on history of calculus

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I just spent the last 20 minutes combing through Wikipedia and hadn't ran into that link once. Great find, and list. Thank you. – Subtle Array Jan 19 '12 at 7:16
@SubtleArray Please note I have added another link you may find useful which includes C.B.Boyer's book – Sniper Clown Jan 19 '12 at 7:19

The wiki article doesn't seem to mention Isaac Barrow's Lectiones Geometricae (1669); which Morris Kline says is "one of the great contributions to the calculus". This should be a good example of how the old thinking differs, as it uses geometrical arguments rather than analytical.

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