Talk:New algebra

good luck !

I am french, and perhaps my english is not ok. If you have time to correct it, do it... The subject is not very easy. good luck.Jean de Parthenay (talk) 10:10, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Nobody ?

I had done what I could. If you want to make it better, you'r welcome. I give up for a while. We'll see in september what this page will look like... Jean de Parthenay (talk) 12:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I have had a quick look through, and it looks pretty good to me. There are a few respects in which the English does not read quite as it would from a native English speaker, notably use of "the" where it is not needed, but there is nothing I noticed seemed in desperate need of rephrasing. and I shall try to find time to go through it more thoroughly sometime. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Cut the "the" when necessary. I take some leisure. We'll see that in september.Jean de Parthenay (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC) In the future, i have to discuss with fanatics of Harriot ; I d' like to do some page about Tarporley... See fr:Nathanael Tarporley, I seems that the guy was the link between Vieta and Harriot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jean de Parthenay (talk • contribs) 22:19, 22 June 2009

I have now worked through most of the article, and hope to finish it soon. I have made numerous very small alterations to bring it more in line with natural English. The one change I have made which I am not sure about is where the original had "symbolical logicstic". As far as I know "logicstic" does not exist in English, and "logistic", the nearest there is, makes no sense in the context. "Symbolic logic" is a perfectly good expression but is clearly not what is being referred to here, (and anyway the concept dates only from the nineteenth century). The original French version of this article has "la logique spécieuse", but I am not quite sure of the meaning of that. I have simply used an expression which seems to make sense in the context, but if either Jean de Parthenay or anyone else knows that I have got it wrong I shall be grateful if they can let me know. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello. you have made a very good job. Neherless, we have a problem with collections of algebra methods for homogeneus polynomials... What I entend to say is the following : With our notations : Vieta worked, and invented $H=\bigcup _{n\in \mathbb {N} }H_{n}$ where $H_{n}=\{\sum (a_{i,j}{x_{i,j}}^{\alpha _{i,j}})\in K[x_{i,j}]/\sum i\alpha _{i,j}=n\}$ i.e. a the set of all the homogeneus polynomials (wich is not exactly an algebra as $P+Q\not \in H$ but multiplicative. I did'nt want to give this own representation in the article. In a contrary : a collection of rules (or methodes), it's exactly what Vieta didn't want to do... (it was the dad's algebra of Cardan and Al-khwarizmi). I'm sur you will find the words to explain it.

For Logistic species... ou logique specieuse, logistique specieuse ? ? I have no word. Even in french it sounds unfriendly. I didn't found traduction of Vieta in english available on the web. You can say too : Symbolic- Arithmetic or Arithmétic of symbols ? Species was a word of laywer when they speak about all their clients, here search viète (in french, allas ).

Soon. Jean de Parthenay (talk) 12:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. In connection with algebras of homogeneous polynomials I now understand what you mean, and have edited it accordingly. I think the wording could be made clearer, and so maybe I will come back to it, but I think the present version correctly represents what you mean: I hope so. As for "la logique spécieuse", the reference you gave was very helpful, and also interesting. The information about the relationship between the use of French terms in law and in mathematics is fascinating; I am not aware of anything similar in English usage. However, the passage certainly clarified the meaning of the expression. In particular I found this helpful: Viète ... a donné ... le nom de species aux lettres A, B, C, etc qu'il utilise pour représenter de manière indéfinie un nombre ou une quantité.... Clearly "species" here refers to a symbol used to refer indefinitely to a quantity, so "la logique spécieuse" refers, I suppose, to a system for manipulating general forms representing quantities, as opposed to manipulating the quantities themselves. Have I understood that correctly? If that is right then "calculus of indefinites" might be an adequate English version. Alternatively "calculus of symbols", but I think the emphasis is better placed on the indefinite concept, rather than on the concrete symbol which represents it. Of course "calculus of indefinites" does not capture the exact nuance of the French, with its reference to legal ideas, but perhaps it adequately reflects the mathematical part of the sense, and I shall provisionally put that expression in. Let me know if I have got it wrong. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I keep changing my mind: "calculus of symbols" now seems to me to be clearer in meaning. I can even see a case for putting both in: "calculus of symbols representing indefinites", but that is rather a cumbersome expression. Oh well, i suppose it's pointless worrying about it: we just need to choose one which more or less captures the sense of the French. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

You have perfectly understood, I think, the kind of gap that Vieta accomplished for the human sake (sic). Thomas Harriot understood immediatly how powerfull this invention was (through their common student Tarporley). It's a pity there is no article about Tarporley Nathanael in Wpen. I wrote it for the french Wpfr : here fr:Nathanael Tarporley. This homogeneus half-algebra was the first step in the symbolic calculus, (from Nemorarius to Regiomontanus nobody acted on the letters efficiently, it was just a notation). The second step had been accomplished by Harriot and Descartes. But Vieta was systematicly rejected by Descartes (as Harriot) who sworn to Mersenne not to have read him... (nor Harriot). I think there is a lot of work to do about that subject and I tried to exhume all the students and all the relatives (protestant lords who protected Viète) on Wpfr in purpose to make him better known. Pfoo. I hope that i did'nt bore you with all these olds things. Thousand thanks for your gracious help.Jean de Parthenay (talk) 14:07, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Good article

Leaving aside the details of translation which are discussed above, I think this is a very good article, and clearly a lot of work has gone into it. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Poor article

@JamesBWatson: There are a lot of secondary sources on this subject, none of which have been used. There's no discussion of its use and development after Viète. Doug Weller talk 16:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow, a response to a talk page post I made eight years ago! Almost certainly a personal record for me. Doug, I find it rather amazing to see how I wrote here all those years ago. There are quite a few things I said here then that I wouldn't say now, including describing it as "a very good article". Back in June 2009 I had only recently started editing to any significant extent (previously I had only made occasional edits, mostly trivial corrections) and I clearly had only a limited perspective on Wikipedia articles. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:20, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@JamesBWatson: Been there, done that, got the tshirt. I've cringed at times when I've discovered an earlier edit. Any suggestions as to what to do about this? I've not touched it yet because of your earlier comment. And I don't do much about math articles. Doug Weller talk 13:23, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: My first thought in response to your question "Any suggestions as to what to do about this?" was "I wouldn't know where to start. I know very little about the subject, and I don't have immediate access to relevant sources."

My second thoughts, on looking at the matter in more detail, were as follows. In its early stages, the article was substantially about the "New algebra" developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It gave considerable attention to the Isagoge, including a detailed chapter by chapter summary of its contents, which I would regard as probably excessive in an article titled The Isagoge, and as certainly excessive in an article ostensibly about the "new algebra". However, there was also a substantial body of information on the history and the general nature of the "new algebra". A good first step towards improving what was a very badly written article [sic] would have been heavily pruning the content about the Isagoge. What has actually happened, alas, is the opposite: virtually all content has been removed apart from the excessively detailed summary of the Isagoge. Thus, an article which, despite what I wrote back in 2009, was from the start very poor, has become even worse. Therefore, if one wishes to improve the article, the first step would be to go back to versions of the article before the mass removal of content and see what content not about the Isagoge could be salvaged. (A bit of history: Virtually all content, not just that on the Isagoge, was removed by an IP editor who gave no explanation in December 2011, leaving this stub. Another IP editor then selectively restored content on the Isagoge, again without explanation.) The removed content suffered from various problems, including being written like a personal essay, poor sourcing, etc, and could do with a lot of rewriting, but at least it attempted to give a general coverage of its supposed subject, which the current version doesn't.

My third thoughts, which were formed in the process of checking various aspects of the matter while I was composing the paragraph above, are as follows. (1) Certainly, there were important and dramatic changes in algebra at the time referred to in the article, but an article New algebra should not exist unless there is a recognised use of the term "New algebra" specifically to refer to the particular developments referred to in the article. I have searched, and found no evidence that there is. (Of course, there are uses of the generic term "new algebra" in relation to that period, but so there are in relation to, for example, algebra in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I see no evidence that the term is recognised as a specific name for the subject of this article.) (2) No version of the article has been much good. The December 2011 stub I linked to above at least has the virtue of not containing much bad material, but it does not contain anything justifying keeping a separate article on the subject, distinct from the article History of algebra. In fact, I really don't think any version of the article has any substantial content worth saving. If anyone does think this particular aspect of the history of algebra deserves an article of its own, they would be better off writing a new one from scratch than trying to improve this one.

The conclusion of all this is that in my opinion to improve this article there are two reasonable options: either redirect it to History of algebra or propose deletion. On the whole I incline towards deletion, in view of the fact that, as I have said, this does not seem to be a recognised term, and it is therefore an unlikely search term. Any thoughts? The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:31, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@JamesBWatson: Many apologies not to have responded sooner. I thought about taking it to AfD but found that there was some discussion of it in what seems to be reliable sources at GBooks[1] and Google scholar. Those searches make me dubious that WP:AfD would work. I've got another suggestions, redirect it to François Viète which although not perfect has the virtue of actually discussing his new algebra, which is what any article on the subject should do. Doug Weller talk 12:25, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: My last post here was two days after your post that it responded to, and your last post here was two days after mine that it responded to, so I don't think you have to apologise for not responding earlier.

I can't imagine why I didn't think of a Google books search, but even a quick glance at the list of hits makes it clear that the expression "new algebra" is indeed a recognised term in relation to Vieta's work, contrary to the impression that I expressed above. (And yes, I do know that it is now fashionable to use the French form of his name, but I stick to the traditional Latin form, for reasons which I could easily explain, but this is enough of an unnecessary digression already.)

Personally, when an article is really useless, I prefer to delete and redirect, because just redirecting is depressingly commonly followed by someone reverting to the useless version in the editing history, often very much later, so it is not noticed. However, since as you say there is no indication that deletion would work, just redirecting as you suggest is the most straightforward option, so I have done that. It is possible that at some level my preference for deletion is also influenced by the fact that it would also get rid of my old comments here, which I would be glad to see the back of. Oh well... The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:22, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Lol, your past has come back to haunt you. Thanks, that seems the best option. Doug Weller talk 12:03, 3 July 2017 (UTC)