Zaxos1111

January 2017

Hello, I'm MrOllie. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ollie,

Calculus is a very complex idea that took academics across Europe over a 100 years before it came to the point we know it today. Unfortunately, our education throughout the world is not making that clear: a lot of people think that Newton and Leibniz are responsible for modern calculus without knowing who Cavalieri was or who Wellis was.

This has tremendous consequences for the intellectual development of ppl throughout the world: they see the individual without being aware of the concerted effort, they see the man without understanding the team effort behind the triumph that calculus is.

The fact is that if Cavalieri has not invested his time in a rather shaky at the time, experimental research idea and if Wellis hasnt generalized on Cavalieri's findings, Newton wouldnt have been able to do what he did.

As I said in my comment under my edit:

It took at least three outstanding academics over 100 years to develop Calculus as we know it and readers should be able to get this from the introductory statement of Main|History of calculus.

So to say that Calculus was developed by Newton and Leibniz is in fact a misleading statement, one that lets children and young teens under the impression that Newton and Leibniz are in fact 100% responsible for something that is much bigger than these two people alone. It is erroneous, confusing and has nothing to do with neutrality.

I am glad that someone is looking after influential posts like this but if you need some reference I strongly recommend this:

http://math.bard.edu/bloch/history_calculus_slides.pdf

Just go to slide 9 and 10.

Or go to the wikipedia pages of Cavalieri and Wellis and check out who these people were.

Or go to the Britannica pages of the same ppl.

I ll let you a few hours to examine the resources yourself and I am waiting for a detailed reply on whether you still think this is breaching a policy of neutrality.

To say that Leibniz and Newton did all by themselves is a lie and a false statement that does not serve anyone.

here is my edit for reference:

Modern calculus was developed in 17th-century Europe by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, after the ingenious ideas and hard work of Bonaventura Cavalieri and John Wallis. Elements of it have appeared before, in ancient India, Greece, China, medieval Europe, and the Middle East.