On the Contested Expanding Rôle of Applied Mathematics from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
timetable:
Thu 16 Sep, 10:30 - 12:00, Sala Conferenze Centro De Giorgi
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The Place of Instruments in the Expanding Role of Mathematics
speaker: James Bennett (University of Oxford)abstract: This paper takes the long historical period proposed by the workshop and tries to characterise the development of mathematical instruments, a category that survived through the eighteenth century with essentially the same meaning as it had had in the Renaissance. On the way there was expansion and contest, but to understand this story of survival, it is an important to pay as much attention to what mathematical instruments were not as to as what they were. Taking Kuhn’s article as a point of departure, we shall consider whether his analysis, setting the classical and mathematical against the experimental and ‘non-mechanical’ can handle the narrative of mathematical instruments.
timetable:
Thu 16 Sep, 10:30 - 12:00, Sala Conferenze Centro De Giorgi
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