Article ID: CBB144472231

How Leibniz Read Pascal’s Geometry: The Practice of Reading as Hybrid Hermeneutics in the Materiality of Leibniz’s Pascaliana (2022)

unapi

Abstract Between 1675 and 1676, while in Paris, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) got privileged access to some geometric manuscripts from late Blaise Pascal’s hand. Although said manuscripts are not extant, Leibniz’s reading notes were preserved, together with his personal papers in Hannover, under the heading “Pascaliana.” The mathematical content of these notes and the influence they had on Leibniz’s later work are quite known nowadays. At the crossroads of the history of ideas, historical epistemology, and material history, this contribution looks at Leibniz’s Pascaliana through the prism of their materiality—format, layout, organization, corrections, and additions—, and the practices it betrays—copying, commenting, excerpting. Parallel to knowing what Leibniz read in Pascal, this perspective allows us to shed light on how Leibniz read Pascal, on the very intellectual-material operations that allowed him to incorporate a foreign thought and, eventually, start developing his own.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB144472231/

Similar Citations

Article Andrea Del Centina; (2020)
Pascal’s mystic hexagram, and a conjectural restoration of his lost treatise on conic sections

Article Descotes, Dominique; (2010)
An Unknown Mathematical Manuscript by Blaise Pascal

Book Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm; Leibniz-Archiv der Niedersächsischen Landesbibliothek, Hannover, ; (2003)
Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. III. Reihe, Band 5, Mathematischer, naturwissenschaftlicher und technischer Briefwechsel: 1691--1693

Book Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm; Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, ; (2003)
Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. VII. Reihe, Band 3, Mathematische Schriften: 1672--1676: Differenzen, Folgen, Reihen

Article Ricardo Rodríguez Hurtado; Juan A. Nicolás; Javier Echeverría Ezponda; (2021)
The geometric origin of perspectivist science in G.W. Leibniz. Analysis based on unpublished manuscripts

Book Dániel Margócsy; Somos, Márk; Joffe, Stephen N.; (2018)
The Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius: A Worldwide Descriptive Census, Ownership, and Annotations of the 1543 and 1555 Editions

Article Yuste, Piedad; (2004)
Trapezoidal Partition in Old Babylonian Geometry: A Note about Tablet TMS XXIII

Article Hogendijk, Jan P.; (2003)
The Geometrical Problems of Nu`aim ibn Muḥammad ibn Mūsā

Article Sesiano, Jacques; (2003)
Une compilation arabe du XIIe siècle sur quelques propriétés des nombres naturels

Book Alex Mueller; (2023)
Habitual Rhetoric: Digital Writing before Digital Technology

Chapter Mikkel Mangold; (2022)
A Renaissance from Scraps: The Material Evidence for a New Critical Edition of Burckhardt’s Book

Book Jones, Matthew L.; (2006)
The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue

Article Jean Dhombres; (2023)
L’indéfini dans les « Traités de la roulette » de Pascal, son ontologie, ses sources et sa postérité

Article Sandra Bella; (2023)
Avec Pascal, contre Wallis : Démontrer « géométriquement » l’arithmétique des infinis (circa 1690 – 1692)

Article Antoni Malet; (2023)
Some Thoughts on Pascal’s and Galileo’s “Indivisibles” and the Infinite Divisibility of Extension

Article Valérie Debuiche; Thomas Bellon; (2023)
L’espace dans la géométrie et l’épistémologie pascaliennes

Article Jesseph, Douglas M.; (2007)
Descartes, Pascal, and the Epistemology of Mathematics: The Case of the Cycloid

Article Maronne, Sébastien; (2010)
Pascal versus Descartes on Solution of Geometrical Problems and the Sluse-Pascal Correspondence

Article Bouchilloux, Hélène; (1996)
La méthode démonstrative comme résidu de l'art de persuader

Book Bold, Stephen C.; (1996)
Pascal geometer: Discovery and invention in 17th-century France

Authors & Contributors
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von
Bold, Stephen C.
Bouchilloux, Hélène
Debuiche, Valérie
Del Centina, Andrea
Descotes, Dominique
Journals
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences
Historia Mathematica
Sciamvs: Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences
Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Publishers
Akademie-Verlag
Brill
Droz
Oxford University Press
University of Chicago Press
University of Pittsburgh Press
Concepts
Geometry
Manuscripts
Mathematics
Primary literature (historical sources)
Annotations and marginalia
Explanation; hypotheses; theories
People
Pascal, Blaise
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von
Descartes, René
Burckhardt, Jacob
Galilei, Galileo
L'Hôpital, Guillaume François Antoine de
Time Periods
17th century
Medieval
12th century
16th century
18th century
21st century
Places
Mesopotamia
France
Middle and Near East
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment