Article ID: CBB006065321

Practical Mathematicians and Mathematical Practice in Later Seventeenth-Century London (2019)

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Mathematical practitioners in seventeenth-century London formed a cohesive knowledge community that intersected closely with instrument-makers, printers and booksellers. Many wrote books for an increasingly numerate metropolitan market on topics covering a wide range of mathematical disciplines, ranging from algebra to arithmetic, from merchants’ accounts to the art of surveying. They were also teachers of mathematics like John Kersey or Euclid Speidell who would use their own rooms or the premises of instrument-makers for instruction. There was a high degree of interdependency even beyond their immediate milieu. Authors would cite not only each other, but also practitioners of other professions, especially those artisans with whom they collaborated closely. Practical mathematical books effectively served as an advertising medium for the increasingly self-conscious members of a new emerging professional class. Contemporaries would talk explicitly of ‘the London mathematicians’ in distinction to their academic counterparts at Oxford or Cambridge. The article takes a closer look at this metropolitan knowledge culture during the second half of the century, considering its locations, its meeting places and the mathematical clubs which helped forge the identity of its practitioners. It discusses their backgrounds, teaching practices and relations to the London book trade, which supplied inexpensive practical mathematical books to a seemingly insatiable public.

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Article Jim Bennett; Rebekah Higgitt (2019) London 1600–1800: Communities of Natural Knowledge and Artificial Practice. British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 183-196). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB006065321/

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Authors & Contributors
Boucard, Jenny
M. Rosa Massa-Esteve
Kilburn-Toppin, Jasmine
Paola Magrone
Mellado-Romero, Antonio
Linero-Bas, Antonio
Concepts
Mathematics
Arithmetic
Algebra
Science and society
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Philosophy of mathematics
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
16th century
19th century
Renaissance
Early modern
Places
London (England)
Italy
France
United Kingdom
Nuremberg (Germany)
England
Institutions
East India Company (English)
Royal Society of London
Royal Observatory Greenwich
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