Overview

The 1700s were a time of transition for China and Japan, in mathematics as in every other aspect of society and culture. Barriers to Western influence and information, in place for centuries, were beginning to crumble. Scholars and scientists in both countries, eager to learn more of Western science and technology, undertook ambitious programs of translation, aimed at making Western science—and the mathematics that underlay it—available to their countrymen. More importantly, the exposure to Western mathematics served as a spur to Chinese and Japanese mathematics, not in imitation or competition, but rather as a catalyst for rediscovering the roots and resources of their own mathematical traditions; both countries took long looks back at those roots, both extending traditional mathematics and melding those traditions with new skills acquired from the West. The...