Matthew Wickman (Author)
What if historical fiction were understood as a disfiguring of calculus? Or poems enacting the formation and breakdown of community as expositions of irrational numbers? What if, in other words, literary texts possessed a kind of mathematical unconscious?The persistence of the rhetoric of "two cultures," one scientific, the other humanities-based, obscures the porous border and productive relationship that has long existed between literature and mathematics. In eighteenth-century Scottish universities, geometry in particular was considered one of the humanities; anchored in philosophy, it inculcated what we call critical thinking. But challenges to classical geometry within the realm of mathematics obligated Scottish geometers to become more creative in their defense of the traditional discipline; and when literary writers and philosophers incorporated these mathematical problems into their own work, the results were not only ingenious but in some cases pioneering.Literature After Euclid tells the story of the creative adaptation of geometry in Scotland during and after the long eighteenth century. It argues that diverse attempts in literature and philosophy to explain or even emulate the geometric achievements of Isaac Newton and others resulted in innovations that modify our understanding of descriptive and bardic poetry, the aesthetics of the picturesque, and the historical novel. Matthew Wickman's analyses of these innovations in the work of Walter Scott, Robert Burns, James Thomson, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and other literati change how we perceive the Scottish Enlightenment and the later, modernist ethos that purportedly relegated the "classical" Enlightenment to the dustbin of history. Indeed, the Scottish Enlightenment's geometric imagination changes how we see literary history itself.
...MoreReview Jocelyn Rodal (2018) Review of "Literature After Euclid: The Geometric Imagination in the Long Scottish Enlightenment". British Journal for the History of Mathematics (pp. 55-57).
Article
Daniele Pasquazi;
Benedetto Scoppola;
(2021)
Aritmetica euclidea e filosofia stoica
(/isis/citation/CBB278285265/)
Chapter
Renato Migliorato;
(2016)
Il paradigma euclideo e la sua eclissi
(/isis/citation/CBB149906738/)
Book
Giuseppe Cambiano;
(2006)
Figure, macchine, sogni. Saggi sulla scienza antica
(/isis/citation/CBB013124835/)
Article
Yang, Zezhong;
(2005)
The introduction of the Elements in China
(/isis/citation/CBB000650784/)
Article
Goldstein, Joel A.;
(2000)
A Matter of Great Magnitude: The Conflict over Arithmetization in 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-Century English Editions of Euclid's Elements Books I Through VI (1561-1795)
(/isis/citation/CBB000110930/)
Chapter
Rich, Mike;
(2006)
Representing Euclid in the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000773533/)
Article
Domski, Mary;
(2013)
Kant and Newton on the a priori Necessity of Geometry
(/isis/citation/CBB001320266/)
Chapter
Carlo Casolo;
(2018)
La Biblioteca Universale
(/isis/citation/CBB604701261/)
Book
Michael J. Sauter;
(2018)
The Spatial Reformation: Euclid Between Man, Cosmos, and God
(/isis/citation/CBB243303288/)
Chapter
Hélène Bellosta;
(2012)
La destinée arabe des Données d’Euclide
(/isis/citation/CBB209738412/)
Article
Mohamed Mahdi Abdeljaouad;
(2013)
Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārsī’s additions to Book XIII of al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr
(/isis/citation/CBB791536198/)
Article
Sonja Brentjes;
(2019)
Mathematical Commentaries in Arabic and Persian – Purposes, Forms, and Styles
(/isis/citation/CBB154959746/)
Article
Solere, Jean-Luc;
(2003)
L'ordre axiomatique comme modèle d'écriture philosophique dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000770963/)
Article
Corry, Leo;
(2013)
Geometry and Arithmetic in the Medieval Traditions of Euclid's Elements: A View from Book II
(/isis/citation/CBB001213490/)
Article
Palmieri, Paolo;
(2001)
The Obscurity of the Equimultiples: Clavius' and Galileo's Foundational Studies of Euclid's Theory of Proportions
(/isis/citation/CBB000101288/)
Chapter
Celeyrette, Jean;
Mazet, Edmond;
(2005)
Nicole Oresme. Notice Questions sur la Physique, livre III, question 12; Questions sur la Géometrie d'Euclide, questions 1 et 2
(/isis/citation/CBB000640976/)
Article
Mode, ;
(2006)
Studies of the Different Editions of Euclid's Elements
(/isis/citation/CBB000701110/)
Article
De Young, Gregg;
(2012)
Mathematical Diagrams from Manuscript to Print: Examples from the Arabic Euclidean Transmission
(/isis/citation/CBB001211477/)
Article
Harari, Orna;
(2003)
The Concept of Existence and the Role of Constructions in Euclid's Elements
(/isis/citation/CBB000300433/)
Book
David S. Richeson;
(2019)
Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity
(/isis/citation/CBB243851906/)
Be the first to comment!