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Infinitesimals (ε) and infinities (ω) on the hyperreal number line (ε = 1/ω) In mathematics, an infinitesimal number is a non-zero quantity that is closer to 0 than any non-zero real number is. The word infinitesimal comes from a 17th-century Modern Latin coinage infinitesimus, which originally referred to the "infinity-eth" item in a sequence.
This approach departs from the classical logic used in conventional mathematics by denying the law of the excluded middle, e.g., NOT (a ≠ b) does not imply a = b.In particular, in a theory of smooth infinitesimal analysis one can prove for all infinitesimals ε, NOT (ε ≠ 0); yet it is provably false that all infinitesimals are equal to zero. [2]
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that idealized numbers containing infinitesimals be introduced. The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using limits rather than ...
Keisler's Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach defines continuity on page 125 in terms of infinitesimals, to the exclusion of epsilon, delta methods. The derivative is defined on page 45 using infinitesimals rather than an epsilon-delta approach. The integral is defined on page 183 in terms of infinitesimals.
In mathematics education, calculus is an abbreviation of both infinitesimal calculus and integral calculus, which denotes courses of elementary mathematical analysis.. In Latin, the word calculus means “small pebble”, (the diminutive of calx, meaning "stone"), a meaning which still persists in medicine.
[1] [6] Despite the benefits described by Sullivan, the vast majority of mathematicians have not adopted infinitesimal methods in their teaching. [7] Recently, Katz & Katz [8] give a positive account of a calculus course based on Keisler's book. O'Donovan also described his experience teaching calculus using infinitesimals.
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Cavalieri's principle was originally called the method of indivisibles, the name it was known by in Renaissance Europe. [2] Cavalieri developed a complete theory of indivisibles, elaborated in his Geometria indivisibilibus continuorum nova quadam ratione promota ( Geometry, advanced in a new way by the indivisibles of the continua , 1635) and ...