A FORGOTTEN EPISODE in French-occupied Naples in the years around 1800—just after the French Revolution—illustrates why it makes sense to see mathematics and politics as entangled. The protagonists of this story were gravely concerned about how mainstream mathematical methods were transforming their world—somewhat akin to our current-day concerns about how digital algorithms are transforming ours. But a key difference was their straightforward moral and political reading of those mathematical methods. By contrast, in our own era we seem to think that mathematics offers entirely neutral tools for ordering and reordering the world—we have, in other words, forgotten something that was obvious to them.

In this essay, I’ll use the case of revolutionary Naples to argue that the rise of a new and allegedly neutral mathematics—characterized by rigor and voluntary restriction—was a mathematical response to pressing political problems. Specifically, it was a response to the question of how to stabilize social order after the turbulence of the French Revolution. Mathematics, I argue, provided the logical infrastructure for the return to order. This episode, then, shows how and why mathematical concepts and methods are anything but timeless or neutral; they define what “reason” is, and what it is not, and thus the concrete possibilities of political action. The technical and political are two sides of the same coin—and changes in notions like mathematical rigor, provability, and necessity simultaneously constitute changes in our political imagination.

#Mathematics #Math #Analysis #MassimoMazzotti #LAReviewOfBooks #Epistemology #Revolution #RealAnalysis #HistoryOfMath #HistoryOfMathematics

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/foundational-anxieties-modern-mathematics-and-the-political-imagination/

Several of my #PurdueFortWayne #Math colleagues retired shortly after the 2020 pandemic outset, and some since then, and we finally had a retirement dinner celebration for all of them. (particularly famous among them, graph theorist L. Beineke   )

Lots of photos:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mz78CL8aewmtRK759
#GraphTheory #HistoryOfMath

William Lawvere, Explicit Foundational Concepts in the Teaching of Mathematics (2007)

#Mathematics #MathTeaching #HistoryofMath #Lawvere

Others may have known this already, but this was entirely new to me: most of your favourite mathematicians all knew each other from their PhD-advisor relationships.

https://jrhawley.ca/2024/07/16/most-of-your-favourite-mathematicians-knew-each-other

How cool is that

#math #HistoryOfMath

#HistoryOfMath
@highergeometer

Oliver Deiser writes:

"The correspondence between Georg Cantor and Richard Dedekind is one of the most important historical documents on the development of modern mathematics in the second half of the 19th century."

And further:

"... the part of the correspondence that remains most interesting from a mathematical point of view, was published by Emmy Noether and Jean Cavaillès 1937 in a slim volume that is difficult to access today."

Here is a selection that Oliver Deiser has put online:

https://www.aleph1.info/?call=Puc&permalink=cd1_Vorwort

Does anyone know where I can find some good references for how different cultures did math, especially before contact with each other? Ideally something approachable, and the more unexpected and unusual the better.

This was an interesting reference, and has some elements of what I'm looking for:
https://ethw.org/Ancient_Computers

Boosts appreciated!

#MathQuestion #HistoryOfMath #MathAndCulture

#introductions

In theory I’m a #physics / #math student but I’ve kinda been sidelined currently by #mentalhealth issues

Other interests:
#chemistry
#plants / #botany
#languages / #linguistics (yes same handle on Duolingo…)
#computinghistory
#historyofscience #HistoryOfMath and indeed #history
#cooking / #food
#textiles — #knitting #crochet #weaving #sewing #nalbinding #lacemaking #tatting etc
#fandom /#reading many of which are #scifi or #fantasy
#hiking often in #stateparks & beginner at #running