Questions tagged [terminology]
For questions about terms, definitions and related concepts used in science and mathematics.
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Why is one of Maxwell's equations named after Ampère? Who first named it after Ampère?
Ampère never wrote down what is confusingly called "Ampère's circuital law," not even the form without the displacement current term, as Ampère never dealt with the field concept.* Maxwell derived
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Who first considered the $f$ in $f(x)$ as an object in itself, and who decided to call it a function?
The question is in the title, but allow me to provide some background.
I’m aware that Leibniz introduced the word “function” into mathematics (around 1673) and that Johann Bernoulli or Euler ...
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Introduction of $\imath$ and $\jmath$ notations for the imaginary unit
The imaginary unit is generally denoted $i$ or $\imath$. I have learned that the term imaginary ("imaginaires") was coined by R. Descartes in 1637, and the "i" notation was introduced by L. Euler (cf. ...
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What is the etymology behind sine, cosine, tangent, etc.?
I heard somewhere that it was actually a mistake in translation. What's the correct story?
user4795
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When and why did people stopped using "natural philosophy" term and started using "science"?
Previously what is called now "natural sciences" was called "natural philosophy". I'm interested in details, what was so wrong with the name "philosophy" so the name "science" became preferred?
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Historical roots of the justification for the rule for multiplication of negative numbers
As a follow up question with respect to : Who wrote down minus times minus is equal to plus? and to : Historically, how did people define multiplication for negative numbers?, it can be interesting to ...
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Why is one meter as long as it is?
The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in
a vacuum in 1/299 792 458 of a second
Why is this so? Who decided that 1/299,792,458 of a ...
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Why did angular momentum get the letter L
Note - this question was inspired by this questions on physics.SE.
Many (most) physical quantities are denoted with a single letter - latin or greek. For many, the letter chosen makes sense: $t$ for ...
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Etymology of "power" (math.)
Having done some searches on the internet, seems like the term "power" is a mistranslation. The Wikipedia article links to an article in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive where it is written
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Is it true that Leibniz introduced "constant," "variable," and "function"?
I read in a not always reliable source (David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, p.104), that Leibniz introduced the terms constant, variable, and function, the latter as an alternative to Newton's ...
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What was the definition of a scientist and how did it evolve? When was science categorized?
I'm asking this question as I've noticed that scientists like Gauss, Newton, Euler, Lagrange etc developed theories in many scientific fields(these ones that I know of were mostly interested in math ...
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Who are "analysts" and "synthesists" in mathematics?
What is the difference between the terms "analysis" and "synthesis" used in a mathematical context?
For example, Hawkins's Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups p. 3 says that Klein and Lie
were ...
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Why do we call it a "positive definite matrix" rather than a "positively definite matrix"?
The term positive definite matrix is a standard one used in mathematics, especially in linear algebra.
Are there grammatical, linguistic, or historical reasons why it was not called a positively ...
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Did Kronecker's "ganzen Zahlen" refer to whole numbers as natural numbers or integers?
Maybe this is a question better for German language Stack Exchange, but in the quote attributed to Kronecker:
Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk.
So "...
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What was the evolution of "basis" and "generating set" in algebra?
Today, I've heard someone speak of a basis (of an ideal), meaning a generating set. All the time, I was fine with the term Gröbner-basis, but when it comes without the prefix, it's a bit funny, since ...
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