{"id":875,"date":"2017-03-25T15:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T20:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/?p=875"},"modified":"2025-01-05T13:53:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T19:53:29","slug":"the-history-of-calculus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/the-history-of-calculus\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Calculus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m embarking on a new project with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greentproductions.org\/\">Green T Productions<\/a>. I&#8217;ll be a consulting playwright on a work developed by the ensemble, similar to my role on Silkworms, though in this case I&#8217;m involved earlier, helping to choose and focus the subject matter. The working title is <i>The History of Calculus<\/i>, but I&#8217;ve promised we&#8217;ll change it to something less intimidating. (Though in a way that intimidation is what the play&#8217;s about. The experience of being stymied by math.)<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a fun quote from the research material &#8211; Voltaire describing Newton&#8217;s achievement in inventing calculus:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is the art of numbering and measuring exactly a thing whose existence cannot be conceived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Reminds me of the 18th century trading company created to take advantage of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Sea_Company\">the South Sea Bubble<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A Company for Carrying out an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but Nobody to Know What It Is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m embarking on a new project with Green T Productions. I&#8217;ll be a consulting playwright on a work developed by the ensemble, similar to my role on Silkworms, though in this case I&#8217;m involved earlier, helping to choose and focus the subject matter. The working title is The History of Calculus, but I&#8217;ve promised we&#8217;ll [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,16],"tags":[29,40],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-theatre","tag-studying","tag-calculus","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sir_Isaac_Newton_1643-1727.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3504,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/3504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}