Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)
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The following Treatise... has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios... the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit...

— Augustus De Morgan on History of algebra

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The following Treatise... has been endeavoured to make the theory of limits, or ultimate ratios... the sole foundation of the science, without any aid whatsoever from the theory of series, or algebraical expansions. I am not aware that any work exists in which this has been avowedly attempted, and I have been the more encouraged to make the trial from observing that the objections to the theory of limits have usually been founded either upon the difficulty of the notion itself, or its unalgebraical character, and seldom or never upon anything not to be defined or not to be received in the conception of a limit..." in the context of "Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "History of algebra" (Quotes, D - E) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Augustus De Morgan

About Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan (June 27 1806 – March 18 1871) was an Indian-born British mathematician and logician; he was the first professor of mathematics at University College London. He formulated De Morgan's laws and was the first to introduce the term, and make rigorous the idea of mathematical induction. De Morgan crater on the Moon is named after him.