LEIBNIZ, Gottfried Wilhelm von.

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Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis. Third edition of the first published work on the subject of calculus, in the 1684 volume of the German scientific journal Acta eruditorum, here included as part of a run of the first eight years of the journal in a uniform contemporary binding, and unusual in commerce in such state.The journal was issued in monthly parts. Recent scholarship by Samuel V. Lemley has determined there were three editions of the October monthly part including Leibniz's paper. The first edition was printed in 1684, the second in 1686. This is the third edition, incorporating Leibniz's revisions, printed in 1692 or 1693. The plate accompanying the paper is in the first state. It is apparent that individual parts were reprinted to allow subscribers to fill out incomplete sets, and that these reprintings were authorized, rather than piracies.The paper, just seven pages long, "was the first attempt to set out the rules governing infinitesimal procedures. The rules are introduced geometrically, translated into algebraic terms, and then redescribed in terms of differentials. This enables Leibniz to provide basic rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Specifying rules for the manipulation of signs, depending on whether the ordinates increase or decrease, he moves to the behaviour of curves, leading him to introduce second-order differentials, and by these means he offers procedures for finding powers and taking roots... Nevertheless, it should b

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