#historyofmath — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #historyofmath, aggregated by home.social.
-
It's eye-opening to me that what we call Arabic numerals are based on earlier numerals from India. It's possible that the earliest known Indo numerals, the Brahmi numerals, have their origin in even earlier numerals from China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Brahmi_numeral_system_and_its_descendants.png
-
👴📚 Oh, the excitement of rediscovering a 90-year-old math idea! #CCA is apparently the "inspiration" for modern tech, but let's be real: it's just a desperate dust-off of Harold Hotelling's 1936 work. "Groundbreaking," if you forgot what century you're in. 🙄🔍
https://shonczinner.github.io/posts/embedding-prediction/ #rediscoveringmath #HaroldHotelling #moderntech #historyofmath #groundbreakingideas #dustyarchives #HackerNews #ngated -
👴📚 Oh, the excitement of rediscovering a 90-year-old math idea! #CCA is apparently the "inspiration" for modern tech, but let's be real: it's just a desperate dust-off of Harold Hotelling's 1936 work. "Groundbreaking," if you forgot what century you're in. 🙄🔍
https://shonczinner.github.io/posts/embedding-prediction/ #rediscoveringmath #HaroldHotelling #moderntech #historyofmath #groundbreakingideas #dustyarchives #HackerNews #ngated -
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
-
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
-
@paysmaths @Theoremoftheday Beineke and Wilson and Erdős at a #PurdueFortWayne conference, 2014 :k33: :k5:
#HistoryOfMath
https://photos.app.goo.gl/FmEUv2QhRZnuV7yt7 -
@paysmaths @Theoremoftheday Beineke and Wilson and Erdős at a #PurdueFortWayne conference, 2014 :k33: :k5:
#HistoryOfMath
https://photos.app.goo.gl/FmEUv2QhRZnuV7yt7 -
Ah, yes, the ancient tablet's "secrets" are finally revealed after a mere century of head-scratching, only to tell us... math was involved. 🧠🔍 So glad we spent all that time deciphering numbers that even high schoolers could probably explain. 🎓😂
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-ancient-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-study #ancienttablet #mathrevealed #secretsdecoded #historyofmath #decodingnumbers #HackerNews #ngated -
Ah, yes, the ancient tablet's "secrets" are finally revealed after a mere century of head-scratching, only to tell us... math was involved. 🧠🔍 So glad we spent all that time deciphering numbers that even high schoolers could probably explain. 🎓😂
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-ancient-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-study #ancienttablet #mathrevealed #secretsdecoded #historyofmath #decodingnumbers #HackerNews #ngated -
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
-
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
-
#HistoryOfMath
@highergeometerOliver 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:
-
#HistoryOfMath
@highergeometerOliver 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:
-
Does anyone know where I can find some good references for how different cultures did math? 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 -
I don't know why you have to go looking for this in the CSHPM Bulletin (http://www.cshpm.org/archives/bulletins/71-2022.pdf p. 10) but the CfP for the next CSHPM #PhilosophyOfMath #HistoryOfMath meeting is out. Special session on Underrepresented Mathematics! Deadline for abstracts Feb 1, 2023 #xp
-
Computerarchäologie und Mathematikgeschichte(n)
Die Inspiration zu diesem Artikel kam von diesem Beitrag, in dem Stephen Wolfram die über dreißigjährige Geschichte seiner Software Mathematica zelebrierte. Mathematica hat auch mich beinahe mein ganzes Berufsleben lang begleitet, denn obwohl die Software proprietär ist und sauteuer war, kam man in der Forschung nicnt an diesem Mathematikboliden vorbei. http://blog.schockwellenreiter.de/2021/10/2021102401.html #Mathematica #HistoryOfScience #HistoryOfMath
