PREHISTORY OF THE INFINITESIMAL CALCULUS

The discovery of infinitesimal calculus (one of the most important products of human spirit of all times) is usually attributed to English mathematician and physicist Newton and to German mathematician and philosopher Leibniz. However, the problems of measure of change and of limits had been approached and pondered upon by a range of scholars long before them in the past. This article deals with the developments of this issue from the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes who (although ancient Greeks were scared stiff of infinity) probably lay the foundations of integral calculus by the exhaustion method. In Middle Ages, the considerations of infinitely small quantities caught the eyes of Nemorarius, Bradwardin, and Oresme. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries the considerations of infinitesimal calculus were on agenda of Kepler and Galilei. And then there followed the era of Newton and Leibnitz who realized that differential calculus and integral calculus are mutually opposing procedures.