• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.26 no.5_6
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• pp.355-370
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• 2013

Thomas Harriot has been introduced in middle school textbooks as a great mathematician who created the sign of inequality. This study is about Harriot's symbolism and the theory of equation. Harriot made symbols of mathematical concepts and operations and used the algebraic visual representation which were combinations of symbols. He also stated solving equations in numbers, canonical, and by reduction. His epoch-making inventions of algebraic equation using notation of operation and letters are similar to recent mathematical representation. This study which reveals Harriot's contribution to general and structural approach of mathematical solution shows many developments of algebra in 16th and 17th centuries from Viete to Harriot and from Harriot to Descartes.

• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.15-27
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• 2012

Thomas Harriot(1560-1621) introduced a simplified notation for algebra. His fundamental research on the theory of equations was far ahead of that time. He invented certain symbols which are used today. Harriot treated all answers to solve equations equally whether positive or negative, real or imaginary. He did outstanding work on the solution of equations, recognizing negative roots and complex roots in a way that makes his solutions look like a present day solution. Since he published no mathematical work in his lifetime, his achievements were not recognized in mathematical history and mathematics education. In this paper, by comparing his works with Viete and Descartes those are mathematicians in the same age, I show his achievements in mathematics.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.111-139
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• 2016

Plato's philosophical importance in western thinking history cannot be understated. Especially his dichotomy system became common to the European traditions of philosophical and scientific discourses by assigning principal value to the presence that is opposed to the absence. Since the ancient Greeks, the concept of presence has been expressed itself in number of ways such as God, Truth, Logos, and center. Derrida called this European thinking "the metaphysics of presence." In order to analyze logocentrism also called the metaphysics of presence in No Telephone to Heaven, I used the term, paralogy that Aristotle did not accept as rules of argumentation but that Lyotard revived it positively as the principle of reason. Lyotard's incredulity towards rationalist theory of modernism is that knowledge can never be certain. Without any ultimate validity, certainty is impossible. Nevertheless, as Fanon said, the colonial world is dominated with a traditional Manichaean world. As a result what remains to the colonized to establish their identities is that of an armed struggle towards the colonizer even though they know it results in the vicious circle of hatred endlessly. Cliff attempted to show this message in her text through the tragic heroine, Clare Savage. Cliff's another critique of modernism's rationalism is shown through the ambiguous sexuality of Harry/Harriot. In this novel, gender plays also a central role by questioning the traditional binary system of sexuality. In this paper, I deconstructed this traditional gender system in terms of Bulter's concept of performitivity. This study will give the text another layer of deconstructive interpretation echoing with the proverb, one tree cannot make a forest.