

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. View the institutional accounts that are providing access.View your signed in personal account and access account management features.Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.Ĭlick the account icon in the top right to: See below.Ī personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions. Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account. When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society.If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal: Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways: If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian. If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.Įnter your library card number to sign in. Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution.Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.Click Sign in through your institution.Shibboleth / Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.Ĭhoose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: The legitimacy of popes and kings, as well as our beliefs in human liberty and progressive science, were at stake-the soul of the modern world hinged on the infinitesimal.Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. In Italy, the defeat of the infinitely small signaled an end to that land's reign as the cultural heart of Europe, and in England, the triumph of infinitesimals helped launch the island nation on a course that would make it the world's first modern state.įrom the imperial cities of Germany to the green hills of Surrey, from the papal palace in Rome to the halls of the Royal Society of London, Alexander demonstrates how a disagreement over a mathematical concept became a contest over the heavens and the earth. The story takes us from the bloody battlefields of Europe's religious wars and the English Civil War and into the lives of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the day, including Galileo and Isaac Newton, Cardinal Bellarmine and Thomas Hobbes, and Christopher Clavius and John Wallis. As Alexander reveals, it wasn't long before the two camps set off on a war that pitted Europe's forces of hierarchy and order against those of pluralism and change. Philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians across Europe embraced infinitesimals as the key to scientific progress, freedom of thought, and a more tolerant society. Indeed, not everyone agreed with the Jesuits. In Infinitesimal, the award-winning historian Amir Alexander exposes the deep-seated reasons behind the rulings of the Jesuits and shows how the doctrine persisted, becoming the foundation of calculus and much of modern mathematics and technology. If infinitesimals were ever accepted, the Jesuits feared, the entire world would be plunged into chaos. The concept was deemed dangerous and subversive, a threat to the belief that the world was an orderly place, governed by a strict and unchanging set of rules. With the stroke of a pen the Jesuit fathers banned the doctrine of infinitesimals, announcing that it could never be taught or even mentioned. On August 10, 1632, five men in flowing black robes convened in a somber Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a deceptively simple proposition: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and infinitely tiny parts.
