Pro Iustitia Calculi Interusurii Leibnitiani.

Bookseller Notes

Abraham Gotthelf Kstner has been called one of the most important figures in the history of science. Born in 1719 in Leipzig, he spent his entire life as a passionate defender of Kepler and Leibniz. In 1756, he was appointed professor of mathematics at Gttingen University, where his students included Gauss. In 1766, he hosted Benjamin Franklin's visit to the University, as part of his continuing efforts to support the efforts of Leibniz's networks to create a republic in North America.Kstner's contributions to science are numerous, but perhaps his most important was his seminal work on developing what his student Gauss would later call "Anti-Euclidean" geometry. As the following excerpts demonstrate, Kstner, like Leibniz and Kepler, rejected Aristotle's insistence that all knowledge must rest on a set of a priori axioms, postutlates, and definitions, as is the case in Euclidean geometry. As Kstner indicates, all Euclidean geometry depends on the truthfulness of the so-called "parallel postulate," which must be accepted without proof. Gauss, and his student Bernhard Riemann, adopted Kstner's view, demanding that all such axiomatic systems be discarded, and that physical science be based on demonstrable universal physical principles alone. See Fidelio, Vol. XIII,No, 1-2. Spring/Summer 2004.