CALCULUS WITHOUT INFINITY:

HISTORICAL INSIGHTS FROM TRACTIONAL

CONSTRUCTIONS

Pietro Milici Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne

 FOUNDATIONAL PROGRAM
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Everyday concrete examples are usually adopted in math

education to foster learning (informal use)

Big question: can “concreteness” guide also foundation of

math to have a mathematicians math cognitively “more
comfortable”?

Proposal: idealization of the behaviour of “simple”

machines

Example: Euclid’s geometry (wide application of solutions,

rigorous analysis, based on practical instruments)
 SPECIFIC AIM
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Since its birth Infinitesimal Analysis required the

concept of infinity

Is it possible to provide a rigorous but also

concrete/sensitive foundation of this subject?

From this perspective I propose a new setting of

calculus based on some historical geometric insights
 Ideal machines extension
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 Even though almost forgotten, there was a class of

geometric constructions behind the insight of calculus
(e.g. Leibniz): tractional motion
 Such geometric constructions were forgotten
because of the change of paradigm (geometry was
not able to face in a rigorous way calculus, thus
arithmetization of analysis)
 (this geometric approach died because there was
no general way to recall what such constructions
generated - its algebraic counterpart was missing!)
 Ideal machines extension
5

 Aim: use a modern setting of tractional motion to

develop a suitable exact geometric basis for
calculus (for real and complex differential
equations)
 Moreover, thanks to 20th computer algebra, also
the symbolic manipulation can avoid the concept of
infinity (differential algebra), obtaining a new
balance beyond the Cartesian one.
 Exactness of geometric constructions
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 17th c.: curves defined as continuous traces of

suitable ideal machines

 Introduction of algebra as an analytic tool to solve

geometric problems

(Bos, 2001)
 Descartes’ geometry
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Balance between synthetic tools of construction of

curves (ideal machines) and finite analytic tools of
symbolic manipulation (polynomials)

Dualism: algebraic / trascendental curves

 The problem of trascendental curves
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 Abituation: equation as definition of algebraic

curves

 ..but how can transcendental curves be legitimated?

(geometrically obtained with quadratures or solving
inverse tangent problem)

New machines not allowed in Cartesian canon

 Origin of “tractional motion”
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 Inverse tangent problem

(to find a curve given its tangent properties)
 Mechanical counterpart: Tractional Motion
extension of Cartesian machines to justify the
existence of transcendental curves beyond algebraic
ones (it was not historically precised the limit of
Tractional constructions)
 Introduction of a new constraint to guide the
direction of the curve
 Perrault’s tractrix
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A load initially in B0 is dragged by a bar of fixed

length a having the other end moving along a line r
(Paris, 1670 ca.)
 Perrault’s tractrix
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A load initially in B0 is dragged by a bar of fixed

length a having the other end moving along a line r
(Paris, 1670 ca.)
 Involved mathematicians
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 Huygens 1693 (legitimation of tractional

constructions as pure geometric – independent from
speed or other physical entities)
 Leibniz 1693 (suppose the possibility of constructing
a universal machine to solve all the equations)
 V. Riccati 1752 (a general method to solve
differential equations with tractional constructions)
 Bernoulli, Poleni, also Euler…
 Examples of tractional machines
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Perks (early 18th c.)

Machines for the tractrix and the exponential curve

 How to guide the tangent
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Avoidance of lateral motion

Consider a wheel rolling without slipping on a plane.
When rotating, the direction of the wheel (the bar in
the figure) is always tangent to the curve traced
by the wheel contact point

If we guide with some mechanisms the direction of the

wheel, we can construct a curve given its tangent
properties

Wheel:
late Neolithic
invention
(3500 BCE)
 Example: simulation of a machine
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 A change of paradigm
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 2nd half of 18th c.: passage from solution of

differential problems with geometric constructions to
new algebraic methods (as series)

 Oblivium of tractional constructions: mathematicians

got habitatuation to the definition of transcendental
objects by equations without geometric justifications
 Approaching transcendental without
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infinity
 Tractional motion allows to trace transcendental
curves solving differential equations
 It is possible to study the properties of the traced
curves without infinity
 From a cognitive perspective, that means that we
can approach differential equations with the
metaphor:
the wheel direction is the tangent to the traced curve
 Analysis of these machines
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 Differentially algebraic (D.A.) function y(x) :

Solution of a polynomial P(x,y,y’,…,yn)=0

 First historical example of non D.A. function:

Euler’s Gamma (Holder, 1886)
 Differential algebra
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 Extension of commutative algebra

 Intuitively: variables are no longer numbers but functions
 Out of sum and multiplication there is a new unary
operation, the derivation, satisfying
 D(a+b) = D(a) + D(b)
 D(a b) = D(a) b + a D(b)

 There are elimination algorithms (for systems of

differential polynomials)

Ritt (Columbia University, NY, USA) – first half of 20th c.

 Differential algebra for tractional
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motion
 The behavior of tractional machines can be translated in
polynomial differential equations
 We can use differential algebra to focus on the
behavior of some points (eliminating the other variables)

 We can prove that traceable curves have to be solution

of polynomial differential equations
 …thus are all and only locally D.A. (new historical result)

 Euler’s Gamma function is not traceable by tractional

motion
 Furthermore, given any D.A. function, we can design a
machine generating it
 Epistemological conclusions
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 There’s a construction for every allowed function (it

doesn’t have only to satisfy some conditions)
 Tractional motion and differential algebra constitute a
new balance between geometric construction and
symbolic manipulation, extending Descartes without the
need of infinitary processes
 This time the dualism is defined between functions (no
longer between curves):
D.A. vs Transcendentally transcendental

(this dualism was already introduced by analog

computation – Shannon 1941)
 Possible extensions and fallouts
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 How is it possible to generate functions as Euler’s

Gamma? Important to give a geometric insight to
fractional analysis (derivatives of non integer order)

 Crucial role of tractional motion to the birth of

calculus (Leibniz). Possible applications in math
education?
Manipulative approach to problems usually
perceived as purely theoretical (Maschietto&Bussi
2011)
 Toward a definition of exactness?
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 17th c.: exactness of geometric constructions relied on

philosophical justifications
 Can we provide a mathematical definition to define exact
constructions? [“exact” means that constructions need neither
approximations {e.g. computable analysis} nor infinity
{classical calculus}]
 A first candidate for a possible definition can be:

a computational framework is “exact”

iff there exists an algorithm for the equality test
(in the approach based on tractional motion equality test is
computable, while in the other calculus approaches it is not)
This definition applies to both digital and analog computations
 Bibliography
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Maschietto, M., & Bussi, M. G. B. (2011). Mathematical machines: from

history to mathematics classroom. In Constructing knowledge for teaching
secondary mathematics (pp. 227-245). Springer US.
Bos, H. J. (2001). Redefining geometrical exactness: Descartes'
transformation of the early modern concept of construction. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Milici, P. (2015). A Geometrical Constructive Approach to Infinitesimal
Analysis: Epistemological Potential and Boundaries of Tractional Motion. In
From Logic to Practice (pp. 3-21). Springer International Publishing.
Ritt, J. F. (1950). Differential algebra (Vol. 33). American Mathematical Soc..
Rubel, L. A. (1989). A survey of transcendentally transcendental functions.
American Mathematical Monthly, 96(9), 777-788.
Tournès, D. (2009). La construction tractionnelle des équations différentielles.
A. Blanchard.