Book ID: CBB932449151

Literature After Euclid: The Geometric Imagination in the Long Scottish Enlightenment (2016)

unapi

Matthew Wickman (Author)


University of Pennsylvania Press


Publication Date: 2016
Physical Details: 304
Language: English

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.

...More
Reviewed By

Review 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). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB932449151/

Similar Citations

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/)

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 Mode, ; (2006)
Studies of the Different Editions of Euclid's Elements (/isis/citation/CBB000701110/)

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/)

Authors & Contributors
Migliorato, Renato
Benedetto Scoppola
Casolo, Carlo
Daniele Pasquazi
Abdeljaouad, Mahdi
Mode,
Concepts
Mathematics
Geometry
Philosophy
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Transmission of texts
Time Periods
Ancient
Medieval
18th century
17th century
Early modern
20th century
Places
Greece
Europe
China
England
Mediterranean region
France
Comments

Be the first to comment!

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

Log in or register to comment