The Age of Newton

Abstract

In the latter half of the seventeenth century we find a sudden burst of mathematical output in western Europe. One can speculate that this phenomenon followed the developments in notational expression which occurred shortly after Kepler’s time and which permitted a much more profound understanding of many mathematical concepts. Kepler’s notational capacity was quite limited, and was probably typical of his contemporaries. However, somewhat younger men such as Descartes were already facile in notational matters, and with this facility came an understanding of functional relationships. Descartes’s La Géométrie, for example, played an important part in the developments of the second half of the century.¹