Abstract

The creation of the calculation is the event that, in the second half of the seventeenth century, marked, in a sense, the transition from classical to modern mathematics. The aim of this work is a historical analysis of the rigor and epistemological question and the "metaphysics" of calculus that takes account of the methods of the ancient, as well as interpretations of Leibniz and Newton and their successors. The problem of searching for a sure foundation on which to base the calculus, glimpsed by D'Alembert in the theory of limits and taken up by Lagrange to the theory of infinite series, and that the derivative functions, found in Cachy the pioneer of a new way to seek rigor in analysis. The Cauchy setting will be tightened by Weierstrass in the second half of the 800 with the definition of limit, with the epsilon-delta method, which in turn is based on definitions concerning the real numbers. In this sense we speak of "arithmetisation" analysis.