Read more
John Wallis (1616-1703), was one of the foremost British mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and is also remembered for his important writings on grammar and logic. An interest in music theory led him to produce translations into Latin of three ancient Greek texts - those of Ptolemy, Porphyry and Bryennius - and involved him in discussions with Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, Thomas Salmon and other individuals as his ideas developed. The texts presented in this volume cover the relationship of ancient and modern tuning theory, the building of organs, the phenomena of resonance, and other musical topics.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction; Letters to Henry Oldenburg, May 1664; Letters to Henry Oldenburg, March 1677; ’The harmonics of the ancients compared with today’s’: appendix to Ptolemy’s Harmonics, 1682; Notice of Wallis’s edition of Ptolemy’s Harmonics in the Philosophical Transactions, January 1683; ’A question in musick’, Philosophical Transactions March 1698; A letter to Samuel Pepys, June 1698; Letters to Andrew Fletcher, August 1698; Select Bibliography; Index.
About the author
David Cram is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His wide-ranging publications on the history of ideas about language in the seventeenth century include a co-edited edition of the works of George Dalgarno. Benjamin Wardhaugh is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the author of a number of works on the history of mathematics and its applications. He has edited the writings of Thomas Salmon and co-edited those of John Birchensha for this Ashgate series.
Summary
John Wallis (1616-1703), was one of the foremost British mathematicians of the seventeenth century, and is also remembered for his important writings on grammar and logic. An interest in music theory led him to produce translations into Latin of three ancient Greek texts - those of Ptolemy, Porphyry and Bryennius - and involved him in discussions w
