Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture)

Libraries and archives contain many thousands of early modern mathematical books, of which almost equally many bear readers’ marks, ranging from deliberate annotations and accidental blots to corrections and underlinings. Such evidence provides us with the material and intellectual tools for exploring the nature of mathematical reading and the ways in which mathematics was disseminated and assimilated across different social milieus in the early centuries of print culture. Other evidence is important, too, as the case studies collected in the volume document. Scholarly correspondence can help us understand the motives and difficulties in producing new printed texts, library catalogues can illuminate collection practices, while manuscripts can teach us more about textual traditions. By defining and illuminating the distinctive world of early modern mathematical reading, the volume seeks to close the gap between the history of mathematics as a history of texts and history of mathematics as part of the broader history of human culture. Did Euclid prove Elements I, 12? The early modern debate on intersections and continuity / Vincenzo De Risi -- Numbers and paths : Henry Savile's manuscript treatises on the Euclidean theory of proportion / Robert Goulding -- Reading by drawing. The changing nature of mathematical diagrams in seventeenth-century England / Yelda Nasifoglu -- Interpreting mathematical error : Tycho's problematic diagram and readers' responses / Renee Raphael -- Reading mathematics in the English collegiate-humanist universities / Mordechai Feingold -- Tutor, antiquarian, and almost a practitioner : Brian Twyne's readings of mathematics / Richard J. Oosterhoff -- the origin and development of the Savilian Library / William Poole -- 'A designe inchoate'. Edward bernard's planned edition of Euclid and its scholarly afterlife in late seventeenth-century Oxford / Philip Beeley -- 'The admonitions of a good-natured reader' : marks of use in Georgian mathematical textbooks / Benjamin Wardhaugh -- Instrumental reading : towards a typology of use in early modern practical mathematical texts / Boris Jardine -- 'Several choice collections' in geometry, astronomy, and chronology : using and collecting mathematics in early modern England / Kevin Tracey "By defining and illuminating the distinctive world of early modern mathematical reading, the volume seeks to close the gap between the history of mathematics as a history of texts and history of mathematics as part of the broader history of human culture"-- Provided by publisher The volume contains eleven case studies exploring the production, collection, and use of early modern mathematical texts across different social milieus.