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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Sunbelt Texas, Char Miller
Sunbelt Texas, Char Miller
Pomona Faculty Publications and Research
What then is the Sunbelt, and Texas' place within it? The region first had to be recognized as a region, of course, and that has taken some doing. The term was initially employed in the late 1960s and soon came to loom large in the popular imagination. Still, its boundaries were and are inexact. Where is the Sunbelt? Some commentators have adopted an all-inclusive definition which links together those states south of the thirty-seventh parallel; an even more expansive version includes Virginia and the Pacific Northwest. Others rely on more precise, but no less problematic descriptions which, depending on the …
The Rise Of Urban Texas, Char Miller, David R. Johnson
The Rise Of Urban Texas, Char Miller, David R. Johnson
Pomona Faculty Publications and Research
Texas contains three of the nation's ten largest cities, but their existence has not yet affected the hold that the state's rural heritage has on Texas' imagination--or so Texans' attachment to two nineteenth-century cultural landmarks, the Alamo and the Chisholm Trail, would suggest. As the shrine of Texas liberty, the Alamo continually generates elegies to the manly courage and bravery of the fallen heroes of 1836.
The Centrality Of Mathematics In The History Of Western Thought, Judith V. Grabiner
The Centrality Of Mathematics In The History Of Western Thought, Judith V. Grabiner
Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research
This article explores the interplay of mathematics and philosophy in Western thought as well as applications to other fields.
The Changing Concept Of Change: The Derivative From Fermat To Weierstrass, Judith V. Grabiner
The Changing Concept Of Change: The Derivative From Fermat To Weierstrass, Judith V. Grabiner
Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research
Historically speaking, there were four steps in the development of today's concept of the derivative, which I list here in chronological order. The derivative was first used; it was then discovered; it was then explored and developed; and it was finally defined. That is, examples of what we now recognize as derivatives first were used on an ad hoc basis in solving particular problems; then the general concept lying behind them these uses was identified (as part of the invention of calculus); then many properties of the derivative were explained and developed in applications both to …
James Eights, Albany Naturalist: New Evidence, Char Miller, Naomi Goldsmith
James Eights, Albany Naturalist: New Evidence, Char Miller, Naomi Goldsmith
Pomona Faculty Publications and Research
Eights's contributions to scientific study and to the popularization of science have been understated and misunderstood.
Mathematics In America: The First Hundred Years, Judith V. Grabiner
Mathematics In America: The First Hundred Years, Judith V. Grabiner
Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research
There are two main questions I shall discuss in this paper. First, why was American mathematics so weak from 1776 to 1876? Second, and much more important, how did what happened from 1776-1876 produce an American mathematics respectable by international standards by the end of the nineteenth century? We will see that the "weakness" -at least as measured by the paucity of great names- co-existed with the active building both of mathematics education and of a mathematical community which reached maturity in the 1890's.
The Mathematician, The Historian, And The History Of Mathematics, Judith V. Grabiner
The Mathematician, The Historian, And The History Of Mathematics, Judith V. Grabiner
Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research
The historian's basic questions, whether he is a historian of mathematics or of political institutions, are: what was the past like? and how did the present come to be? The second question --how did the present come to be?-- is the central one in the history of mathematics, whether done by historian or mathematician. But the historian's view of both past and present is quite different from that of the mathematician. The historian is interested in the past in its full richness, and sees any present fact as conditioned by a complex chain of causes in an almost unlimited past. …