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/

Journalist Jackie Snow wrote this amazing article for the Los Angeles Review of Books about #reading behind bars:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/reading-behind-bars-and-beyond-barriers/

It touches on so many aspects of #books in #prisons, from why books on yoga are okay but books on tai chi are not, to concerns about whether Colin Powell's autobiography complied with #prison rules.

#JackieSnow #LAReviewOfBooks #LongRead #bookstodon

ICYMI, last week @egconde's Sordidez was on the front page of the LA Review of Books with a glowing and detailed review which situates the book within the speculative Latinx canon! Check out the article at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tainofuturism-the-hope-for-a-better-future-on-e-g-condes-sordidez/

#bookstodon #bookreview #latinx #indigenousfuturism #climatefiction #sciencefiction #novella #lareviewofbooks

My final #bookreview of the year is about “Offended Sensibilities,” Alisa Ganieva’s incredibly perceptive satire of contemporary Russian society, translated by Carol Apollonio, for #LAReviewofBooks.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/persecution-mania-on-alisa-ganievas-offended-sensibilities/