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In the
history of mathematics The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...
, the generality of algebra was a phrase used by Augustin-Louis Cauchy to describe a method of argument that was used in the 18th century by mathematicians such as
Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...
and Joseph-Louis Lagrange,. particularly in manipulating
infinite series In mathematics, a series is, roughly speaking, a description of the operation of adding infinitely many quantities, one after the other, to a given starting quantity. The study of series is a major part of calculus and its generalization, math ...
. According to Koetsier,. the generality of algebra principle assumed, roughly, that the
algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary a ...
ic rules that hold for a certain class of expressions can be extended to hold more generally on a larger class of objects, even if the rules are no longer obviously valid. As a consequence, 18th century mathematicians believed that they could derive meaningful results by applying the usual rules of algebra and
calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
that hold for finite expansions even when manipulating infinite expansions. In works such as ''
Cours d'Analyse ''Cours d'Analyse de l’École Royale Polytechnique; I.re Partie. Analyse algébrique'' is a seminal textbook in infinitesimal calculus published by Augustin-Louis Cauchy in 1821. The article follows the translation by Bradley and Sandifer in de ...
'', Cauchy rejected the use of "generality of algebra" methods and sought a more
rigorous Rigour (British English) or rigor (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) describes a condition of stiffness or strictness. These constraints may be environmentally imposed, su ...
foundation for
mathematical analysis Analysis is the branch of mathematics dealing with continuous functions, limit (mathematics), limits, and related theories, such as Derivative, differentiation, Integral, integration, measure (mathematics), measure, infinite sequences, series (m ...
.


Example

An example is Euler's derivation of the series for 0. He first evaluated the identity at r=1 to obtain The infinite series on the right hand side of () diverges for all
real Real may refer to: Currencies * Brazilian real (R$) * Central American Republic real * Mexican real * Portuguese real * Spanish real * Spanish colonial real Music Albums * ''Real'' (L'Arc-en-Ciel album) (2000) * ''Real'' (Bright album) (2010) ...
x. But nevertheless integrating this term-by-term gives (), an identity which is known to be true by Fourier analysis.


See also

* Principle of permanence *
Transfer principle In model theory, a transfer principle states that all statements of some language that are true for some structure are true for another structure. One of the first examples was the Lefschetz principle, which states that any sentence in the first- ...


References

Mathematical analysis History of calculus {{mathanalysis-stub