5/20/2023 0 Comments Fermat infinitesimals![]() (Interestingly enough, Bell refers not only to Leibniz but to Cohen, and to the view that infinitesimals are “intensive quantities”-not to claim that Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis is what they had in mind, but rather by way of adding a philosophical gloss to the mathematics: Cohen’s interpretation of infinitesimals is “pre-adapted” to a mathematical model that was, perhaps, partly inspired by it. If one likens Leibniz’s dx to the elements of the ring of infinitesimals Δ described above, that may help the modern reader, not to grasp what Leibniz actually had in mind, but to emulate his thought by evoking d analogous lines of thought in Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis. For them analogies with current concepts may be helpful the key here is to remember that they are analogies, not identities. Who is the historian writing for, after all? Not Leibniz or his contemporaries, but for “us”, one’s egocentrically defined audience of fellow specialists and fellow philosophers. Like cicerones of every sort, the historian needs to be flexible. Sharing success stories and providing models how to address gender issues in philosophy.īut understanding Leibniz is not only a matter of grasping his intentions it is, for us, a matter also of bringing what he said into our discourse and here the “teaching” may go in either direction.
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