Buch, Englisch, 388 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm
Mathematical Heritage through Encyclopedias, 1700–2000
Buch, Englisch, 388 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm
Reihe: Science autour de / around 1900
ISBN: 978-3-032-38457-7
Verlag: Birkhäuser
This contributed volume examines in detail the function and role of dictionaries and encyclopedias published between the 18th and 20th centuries in the compilation, preservation and transmission of mathematical knowledge.
In what ways does encyclopedism deal with mathematics? What choices were made in organizing this knowledge within the general economy of dictionaries and encyclopedias? In what ways is mathematics preserved and perpetuated? What processes of selection, appropriation, adaptation, codification, or standardization of mathematical knowledge and practices are at work in such publications? To address these questions, the book gathers contributions from historians of mathematics on dictionaries and encyclopedias, spanning a wide geographical area (France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the USA). By focusing on the specificities of mathematics, on certain types of mathematical knowledge, on the biographical treatment of the mathematical persona and the construction of posterity, or on the national or non-national character of the knowledge featured, the chapters raise the question of the long-term nature of mathematical knowledge, and especially that of the practical, sometimes contingent, ways in which this is created and the memorial selection that results from it. The contributions adopt some common methodological approaches, especially in the broad choice of dictionaries and encyclopedias studied.
This volume will be of interest not only for mathematicians but also for non-experts, literate or popular readers, as it considers mathematics in its social dimension, at a time when its uses and applications were proliferating, and it was entering the common culture.
Zielgruppe
Research
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
- Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Mathematik Allgemein Geschichte der Mathematik
- Interdisziplinäres Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften, Archivwesen
Weitere Infos & Material
General introduction: Entangled mathematics, dictionaries and encyclopedias.- Mathematical Dictionaries and Heritage in the Eighteenth Century.- Mathematics in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a long-term heritage.- Mathematical Cultures and Editorial Practices in 19th-century France.- Mathematical heritage and national encyclopedias in the interwar period. Mathematics in the Encyclopédie française.- The Role of Mathematics and Mathematicians in the Italian Encyclopaedia: A Case Study on Relativity.- Completely fallen into oblivion: (mis)fortunes of Newton’s Parallelogram in 18th and 19th centuries.- Heritage and patrimonialization in the corpus of astronomy of the Encyclopédie of Diderot, D’Alembert and Jaucourt.- The legacy of Wolff’s bibliographical accounts in Chamber’s Cyclopaedia and in the French Encyclopédie.- Augustus De Morgan’s Anonymous Articles for the Penny Cyclopaedia: Curation of Mathematics for the Masses.- Algebraic curves in the Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften.- Reconstructed pasts and imagined futures: enumerative geometry through the lens of some synthesis texts (1880-1915).- Mathematical dictionaries by Montferrier (1835-1840) and Sonnet (1867), or pantheonising many learned figures.- The patrimonialization of Poncelet's geometric works and figure.- Patrimonializing “mathematician” figures in a national biographical dictionary. The case of the United States and The Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (1887-1889).- The ways and voices of Henri Poincaré's patrimonialization (1893-1992).
