• Journal for History of Mathematics
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.147-166
• /
• 2007

This study is about the law of cosines. It dealt with its historical origin and the developmental process of the age of Greece, Islam and Modern age. Especially, we tried to find out how the extension of the law of cosines for spherical triangles and tetrahedron from the law of cosines for plane was done. On the basis of this analysis, we investigated how the law of cosines was generated and proved it through the logical demonstration and mathematical induction. This made us find out the mathematical meaning of mathematical concepts.