Robert Burns & the How-to of Barrel Gauging

“Alongside the expansion of the state in this period, scientific advances greatly enhanced methods for measuring and taxing goods, and in turn required officials proficient in these complex practices.”

James Fox looks at Robert Burns’s own copy of The Excise Officer’s Pocket Companion

https://howtobook.hypotheses.org/5697

#Scottish #literature #history #RobertBurns #18thcentury #BookHistory #HistoryofScience #HistoryofMathematics

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/

Happy birthday of set theory, for all those who celebrate!

On December 7, 1873, Georg Cantor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor) wrote a letter (https://www.aleph1.info/?call=Puc&permalink=cd1_Briefe_Z4) to Richard Dedekind in which he showed that there are more real numbers than integers and that therefore different kinds of infinity exist. Cantor's proof at this time is not the “diagonalisation” proof that is now usually given.

December 7, 1873 is also the 50th birthday of Leopold Kronecker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker), which is ironic, given the heavy conflicts they would have about set theory.

The birthday of set theory is usually celebrated with a birthday cake that has ℵ₀ candles on it, but you can take fewer if you don't have the space for them. 🕯️

#SetTheory #Mathematics #HistoryOfMathematics #HistoryOfScience #GeorgCantor #LeopoldKronecker

Liber Abacci, by Fibonacci. There is one English translation by Siegler, which has quite a critical comment linked in the German Wikipedia and is not exactly a bargain for one who would just curiously like to read over the book.

Any others, English or German?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Fibonacci
https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Liber_abbaci/Capitulum_I

#mathematics
#historyOfMathematics
#fibonacci
#liberAbbaci

Salve sodales, 

We are back with our seminar series! On Monday, 6th of October, we will welcome Mark Thakkar (Radboud University), who has recently joined the i² project. He will deliver a presentation titled “The Imaginary Tortures of Girolamo Cardano”, from 14:00 to 15:00 (CET). Check our website for more details: 

https://i2erc.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/i%c2%b2-seminar-mark-thakkar-presentation-the-imaginary-tortures-of-girolamo-cardano/

The format is hybrid, so do not hesitate to contact us to get the link if you wish to attend online.

#philosophy #history #HistoryOfMathematics

How Isaac Newton Discovered the Binomial Power Series (2022)

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-isaac-newton-discovered-the-binomial-power-series-20220831/

#HackerNews #IsaacNewton #BinomialPowerSeries #HistoryOfMathematics #ScienceDiscovery #QuantaMagazine