This work stresses the illogical manner in which mathematics has developed, the question of applied mathematics as against 'pure' mathematics, and the challenges to the consistency of mathematics' logical structure that have occurred in the twentieth century.[...]

This comprehensive history traces the development of mathematical ideas and the careers of the men responsible for them. Volume 1 looks at the discipline's origins in Babylon and Egypt, the creation of geometry and trigonometry by the Greeks, and the role of mathematics in the medieval and early mod[...]