Article ID: CBB373036205

Moral improvement through mathematics: Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole’s Nouveaux éléments de géométrie (2021)

unapi

This paper examines the ethical and religious dimensions of mathematical practice in the early modern era by offering an interpretation of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole’s Nouveaux éléments de géométrie (1667). According to these important figures of seventeenth-century French philosophy and theology, mathematics could achieve extra-mathematical or non-mathematical goals; that is, mathematics could foster practices of moral self-improvement, deepen the mathematician’s piety and cultivate epistemic virtues. The Nouveaux éléments de géométrie, which I contend offers the most robust account of the virtues cultivated by mathematics in the period, was envisaged by its authors to cultivate moral, Christian and epistemic virtues that could serve in the fulfilment of moral and Christian obligations. In this paper, I set out the goals of mathematical inquiry for the Port-Royalists and describe the specific virtues they believed a revised edition of the Elements of Euclid could foster. I show that Arnauld and Nicole believed that an acquaintance with mathematics could render a student of Euclid more just, truth-loving, attentive and humble, and better able to discern truth from falsity.

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Authors & Contributors
Mary Ann Caws
Ceccarelli, David
Briend, Jean-Yves
Furani, Khaled
John N. Martin
Anglade, Marie
Concepts
Mathematics
Science and religion
Theology
Geometry
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
20th century, early
19th century
16th century
Places
France
United States
Great Britain
England
Italy
Europe
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