Calculus

"The Three-Cornered Wheel."

Martin Schuster thinks:

"Algebra and geometry had long been well developed. The step from them to basic calculus was really not large." (III, p. 227)

Is it? My school mathematics was so impoverished that it did not include calculus. According to Wikipedia, geometry is the mathematics of shapes, algebra of arithmetic and calculus of change.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of time as analyzed by philosophers and as presented in sf time travel stories. Wells' Time Traveler first discusses time, then "travels" through it. When I led a philosophical discussion group, I argued that we move not through time but through space and that motion takes time. When a group member replied that we do move through time at the rate of sixty seconds per minute, I counter-argued that sixty seconds are a minute and that a rate or speed is a relationship between two quantities. Someone traveling at 30 mph can accelerate to 60 mph whereas no one can accelerate from 60 seconds per minute to 120 seconds per minute. Thus, I had formulated the most basic concept of calculus without realizing that that was what it was.