Method of Fluxions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Method of Fluxions is a book by Isaac Newton. The book was completed in 1671, and published in 1736. Fluxions is Newton's term for differential (and fluents for integral) calculus. He originally developed the method at Woolsthorpe Manor during the closing of Cambridge during the Great Plague of London from 1665 to 1667, but did not choose to make his findings known (similarly, his findings which eventually became the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica were developed at this time and hidden from the world in Newton's notes for many years). Gottfried Leibniz developed his calculus around 1673, and published it in 1684, twenty years before Newton. The calculus notation we use today is mostly that of Leibniz, although Newton's dot notation for differentiation 
for denoting derivatives with respect to time is still in current use throughout mechanics.
Newton's Method of Fluxions was formally published posthumously, but following Leibniz's publication of the calculus a bitter rivalry erupted between the two mathematicians over who had developed the calculus first and so Newton no longer hid his knowledge of fluxions.
[edit] See also
 |
This history of science article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
