Article ID: CBB716397024

Faire l’histoire d’un objet ou celle d’un concept mathématique avec les fonctions mathématiques comme cas d’étude privilégié (2023)

unapi

The historiography of mathematical functions already includes many references of often respectable size, and the present work is neither a new course, nor a kind of summary relating to some original texts not yet analyzed on this subject. It is intended to be a reflection on the practice of the history of mathematics. On the one hand, this is because this work is based on various presentations made previously which are generally unpublished, in the now venerable framework created by the seniority and a number of Franco-Mexican meetings. On the other hand, it is also because this work raises the question of the objective, and also of the issue of objectivity, that exists in telling the history of a theorem, a concept or a mathematical object. And I should not forget the way of using both the sources and the technical knowledge of prospective readers. It is in fact important to signal how deeply the writing of a text in the history of mathematics depends on such readers. While three words seem, wrongly, to frame very specific things that I wish to discuss : history of the fundamental theorem of algebra, concept of variable quantity, or the function object. In the three cases, the difficulty is to deal with things which have acquired their name only long after the nature of the theorem, the properties of the concept or of the object have circulated in various forms. The dangers, that of anachronism in particular, are to freeze a situation, such as a photograph with a dummy background shot, or to neglect or overestimate the importance of the contemporary situation. Our question here is to concretely analyze these dangers in the case of functions, not to destroy previous accounts, but to bring out prejudices, and to allow us to grasp the differences that there are in qualifying a concept or an object. [English translation of title by DeepL.com: Create the history of an object or mathematical concept, using mathematical functions as a case study.]

...More
Included in

Article Vincent Jullien; Carmen Martínez-Adame (2023) Foreward. Almagest (pp. 6-14). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB716397024/

Similar Citations

Article Alan J. Rocke; (2022)
Reflections on the Last and the Next Hundred Years (/isis/citation/CBB294366367/)

Article Adrian Currie; Kirsten Walsh; (2019)
Frameworks for Historians and Philosophers (/isis/citation/CBB164654591/)

Article Robert Bud; (2016)
Representing scale: What should be special about the heritage of mass science? (/isis/citation/CBB100969947/)

Article William H. Brock; (2022)
The Long and Short of It: The Future Writing of History of Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB683831416/)

Article Jeffrey I. Seeman; (2022)
Remote Interviewing and the History of Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB903379745/)

Article Stephen J. Weininger; (2022)
“The Poor Sister:” Coming to Grips with Recent and Contemporary Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB175973451/)

Article Peter J. T. Morris; Jeffrey I. Seeman; (2022)
The Importance of Plurality and Mutual Respect in the Practice of the History of Chemistry (/isis/citation/CBB375881495/)

Article Ana Barahona; (2023)
Erasing borders: a new look at the historiography of science (/isis/citation/CBB305194897/)

Article Sven Dupré; Geert Somsen; (2019)
The History of Knowledge and the Future of Knowledge Societies (/isis/citation/CBB931053546/)

Article Hallvard J. Fossheim; (2019)
Past responsibility: History and the ethics of research on ethnic groups (/isis/citation/CBB562849198/)

Article Paul Merchant; (2019)
What Oral Historians and Historians of Science Can Learn from Each Other (/isis/citation/CBB829034696/)

Article Wang, Yangzong; (2011)
The Chinese Way in Science and the Oral History of Modern Science in China (/isis/citation/CBB001221315/)

Article Duan, Lian; (2011)
Museums of Natural Science and Technology and Oral History (/isis/citation/CBB001221318/)

Article David Rabouin; Anne-Lise Rey; (2022)
La science classique dans la Revue d’histoire des sciences (/isis/citation/CBB509066510/)

Article Joachim L. Dagg; (2019)
Motives and merits of counterfactual histories of science (/isis/citation/CBB710171767/)

Authors & Contributors
Seeman, Jeffrey I.
Barahona, Ana Echeverría
Brock, William H.
Bud, Robert
Duan, Lian
Duchesneau, François
Journals
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences
Chinese Journal for the History of Science and Technology
Almagest
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Concepts
History of science, as a discipline
Historical method
Historiography
Epistemology
Chemistry
Historians of science, modern
People
Bowler, Peter J.
Radick, Gregory
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
16th century
17th century
18th century
Places
China
Institutions
American Chemical Society
History of Science Society
Science History Institute (SHI)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

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

Log in or register to comment