Article ID: CBB648450705

Maligned for Mathematics: Sir Thomas Urquhart and His Trissotetras (2019)

unapi

Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660), celebrated for his English translation of Rabelais’ Gargantua et Pantagruel, has earned some notoriety for his eccentric, putatively incomprehensible early book on trigonometry The Trissotetras (1645). The Trissotetras was too impractical to succeed in its own day as a textbook, since it lacked both trigonometric tables and sample calculations. But its current bad reputation is based on literary authors’ amplifications of the verdict prefaced to its 19th century reprinting by one mathematician, William Wallace, who lacked the background to appreciate the book’s historical context. Considering that context (including seventeenth century ‘copious’ prose, and medieval logic and ‘art of memory’), the bad reputation is undeserved: the book is mathematically clear, clever (e.g. in superimposing 16 problems into one diagram), and complete. The Trissotetras may thus be viewed as simply one more of Urquhart’s polymathic projects and involvements – which included education, rise of the middle class, religious and class conflicts, development of science and mathematics, search for patronage, universal language construction, and development of English prose – which serve to make him a lively and instructive intellectual Everyman for his time.

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Authors & Contributors
Navarro Brotóns, Víctor
DeShong, Rachel
Andreas Thom
Hunziker, Samuel
Wilson, Sierra M.
Wilson, John S.
Concepts
Mathematics
Trigonometry
Science and society
Geography
Astronomy
Mathematical instruments
Time Periods
16th century
17th century
Renaissance
18th century
15th century
Early modern
Places
England
Spain
Europe
Kerala (India)
Milan (Italy)
Turin (Italy)
Institutions
Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics (India)
Universität Wittenberg
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