Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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Equation
(841 words)

1. Beginnings

Even though the equality of quantities and figures or numbers and ratios is a relationship that had been in use in the mathematical sciences since their beginnings, solving equations, that is, the symbolically expressed equality of two algebraic expressions containing known and unknown quantities, did not become a focus of mathematical problem solving until around 1600 – with the advent of symbolic algebra and the analytic geometry dependent on it. Even earlier, though (build…

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Epple, Moritz, “Equation”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_COM_020285>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20180126



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