Leibniz and the infinite (Q1946003)

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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6155074
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Leibniz and the infinite
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6155074

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    Leibniz and the infinite (English)
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    17 April 2013
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    In this beautiful survey paper it is mentioned that people were wrong over the ages in thinking that Leibniz's work on introducing the theory of integration was not done rigorously. According to this article's author, this was due to the fact that only about half of the known 200,000 sheets of paper that Leibniz did produce are published up to now. Indeed, the author refers to \textit{G. W. Leibniz}'s work [De quadratura arithmetica circuli ellipseos et hyperbolae cujus corollarium est trigonometria sine tabulis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck \& Ruprecht (1993; Zbl 0919.01016)] that was published as late as 1993 for the first time. One can find there, in Theorem 6, a completely rigorous foundation of infinitesimal geometry by means of Riemannian sums; in the paper under review it is stated what this is all about. The author refers in this respect also to his paper in [Synthese 133, No. 1--2, 59--73 (2002; Zbl 1032.01011)]. Perhaps he should have taken also a small side glance at the theory of nonstandard analysis as given by A. Robinson.
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    Leibniz
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    infinite
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    infinitely small
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    mathematical rigour
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    Riemann sums
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    integration theory
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    \(\varepsilon\)-\(\delta\) techniques
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    nonstandard analysis
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    survey paper
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