Thus the very advertisement to Girolamo Cardano's Great Art (Ars magna) suggested the dawning of a new epoch in the algebra of the Western world. Although less original than implied here, The Great Art – published in 1545, just two years after Copernicus's De revolutionibus and Vesalius's De fabrica – was an exciting scientific classic. Exciting in the mathematical way, the work announced the solution of two hitherto unsolved problems, finding the roots of cubic and quartic (or biquadratic) equations. As many other classics, it helped to redefine its field. In particular, it fostered an expanding universe of algebraic objects through its consistent acknowledgment of negative roots as well as its brush with imaginary roots.

Still, The Great Art was not solely responsible for the major reconstruction that Western algebra underwent in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Algebra's reconstruction involved new results, objects, language, methodological justification, and a changing relationship with geometry. It was as much due to Francois Viète's Analytic Art as to Cardano's Great Art.