Author Archives: coordinator

Perspectives on the constitution of collections containing scientific documents of the past

Organised by the ERC project SAW (Research Group SPHERE), in the context of the seminar History of Science, History of Text

Venue: Université Paris Diderot , Condorcet Building, room 483A
10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet 75013 Paris – map

June 9th, 2016 – 9:30 am to 5:30 pm

Presentation
This session explores other facets of the working conditions of historians of science: the history of the constitution of the collections in which they find the documents that become the sources of their inquiry.

Speakers
Reviel Netz, The scale of ancient culture
Florence Bretelle Establet, The Making of the Morrison Collection of Chinese Books

Programme  pdf version

Reviel Netz (Stanford University , USA)
The scale of ancient culture
Abstract  –  The talk considers the number of books and, above all, number of authors active in antiquity. The fundamental observation is that ancient culture was big. Further claims are that it emerged rapidly; remained mostly stable for many centuries; and then went through a genuine collapse in scale in the third century CE. The question is explored, to what extent the typical features of the culture of Late Antiquity can be explained in terms of such a transition in scale.

Florence Bretelle Establet (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE – CNRS &  Université Paris Diderot)
The Making of the Morrison Collection of Chinese Books
Abstract  –  Between 1807 and 1823, the Protestant missionary Robert Morrison (1782-1834) started to buy the Chinese books which were available to him in order to make a collection that would serve for Chinese studies. Since Morrison was resident in Guangzhou and Macao and had no opportunity to travel elsewhere within the empire, Morrison’s book-collecting activities were restricted to Guangzhou’s book market. In this talk, I will try to better understand what kinds of items were bought by Morrison and who his providers of books were.

 

Printing scholarship

Organised by the ERC project SAW (Research Group SPHERE), in the context of the seminar History of Science, History of Text

Venue: Université Paris Diderot , Condorcet Building, room 483A
10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet 75013 Paris – map

May 12th, 2016 – 9:30 am to 5:30 pm

Presentation
In continuity with the previous session, the session will explore how we can approach the status of a field of inquiry through the way in which writings are printed, and the various media used for the circulation of knowledge.

Speakers
Henrik Kragh Sørensen
, Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900
Karine Chemla, Publishing on the history of mathematics at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century in France
ZHOU Xiaohan Célestin, For whom were mathematics works written? –Examining the issue from the perspective of printing mathematics in the Ming Dynasty/ –Examining mathematics in the Ming dynasty from the perspective of printing. 数学著作写给谁?——印刷视角检视下的明代数学.

Programme  pdf version

Henrik Kragh Sørensen (Aarhus University, Denmark)
Appropriating role models for the mathematical profession: Biographies in the American Mathematical Monthly around 1900
Abstract – During the decades around 1900, American mathematics underwent monumental developments that took it from a provincial position at the fringes of the mathematical community into a position from which it could compare to other nations and at some point come to dominate global mathematics. At that time, institutions were devised and shaped to promote mathematical research and instruction, and an intriguing group of individuals were moulded into the first generation of really professional American mathematicians.
In this talk, I propose to analyse the writing of history of mathematics — in this particular case the biography of mathematicians — as situated in a particular discourse of professionalization in the local settings of American mathematics around 1900. In this respect, the analysis is based on an adaptation of the meta-biographical methodology employed by Nicolaas Rupke to bring forth the “many Humboldts” appropriated for different (German) socio-political contexts (Rupke, 2008). Rupke’s approach was, however, a longitudinal one devoted to appropriations of one individual at different times over a period of almost 200 years. Here, focus will be much narrower in geographical and temporal terms, yet the subjects of the biographies will be more varied.
The talk seeks to analyse the interplay between the appropriation of past mathematicians and the shaping of a new profession of mathematicians in a local context. It first provides a brief overview of the biographical genre in the nineteenth century as it pertains to mathematics in order to also briefly address the relations between studying biographies of mathematicians and history of mathematics. It then paints a sketch of American mathematics around 1900, by drawing on biographies from the American Mathematical Monthly. This leads into three topical case studies devoted to detailed analyses of biographies published in the American Mathematical Monthly between the inception of the journal in 1894 and 1904 when the editorial line changed to devote much less attention to biographies.

Karine Chemla (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE – CNRS &  Université Paris Diderot)
Publishing on the history of mathematics at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century in France
Abstract – This presentation will approach the history of the history of mathematics (especially ancient mathematics) in France at the end of the 18th century and the 19th century from the viewpoint of where and how writings devoted to this topic were published, and which form they took. It will also address the issues of the identity of the authors, their readership, and the relationship between context of publication and approach to history of mathematics.

ZHOU Xiaohan Célestin (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE)
Mathematical knowledge and the books in which it was printed–Examining mathematics in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) from the perspective of printing
Abstract – Modern studies on the history of mathematics in China have mainly concentrated on assessing the “level” of mathematical knowledge at the time. As a result, this period has generally been regarded as a “declining phase” in the “development of mathematics”. This evaluation has been challenged in the last few decades. Some scholars have called for re-examining the mathematics in this period from the perspective of the practical functions it had at the time. New approaches were accordingly adopted since then. However, “the aim of assessing” still haunts these historians. We suggest that to some extent we need to set this aim aside Examining the mathematics in the milieus in which they were practised and restoring their original existence appear as two issues that need to be addressed. From this point of view, we not only need to study the mathematical texts, but we must also consider the material features of the writings which recorded these bodies of knowledge. This talk will set the writing and publishing of mathematical works against the backdrop of the flourishing printing activities in the Ming dynasty, to address the issues of for whom these mathematical works were produced, the cost of printing, the tactics the works used to persuade people to learn and purchase the book, the author’s role in the progress of publishing, the inheritance (or “plagiarism”) of knowledge and the anti-counterfeiting of the printing, etc.

Genres of writing in the history of ancient science

Organised by the ERC project SAW (Research Group SPHERE), in the context of the seminar History of Science, History of Text

Venue: Université Paris Diderot , Condorcet Building, room 483A
10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet 75013 Paris – map

April 14th, 2016 – 9:30 am to 5:30 pm

Presentation
Which genres can we identify in 19th  and 20th century writings in the history of ancient science? How do these genres depend on their institutional and social context, and which conceptions of the history of science do they reflect?

Speakers
CHEN Zhihui & ZHOU Xiaohan
, Establishing the orthodox: Writing and editing biographies of practitioners in the mathematical sciences in Chinese Qing Dynasty. 塑造传统:中国清代对畴人传记的编写
Agathe Keller, Listing biographies in histories of mathematics of the Indian subcontinent
Martina Schneider, History of (ancient) mathematics in the German biographical lexicon ADB

Programme  pdf version

CHEN Zhihui & ZHOU Xiaohan (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE – CNRS &  Université Paris Diderot)
Establishing the orthodox: Writing and editing biographies of practitioners in the mathematical sciences in Chinese Qing Dynasty. 塑造传统:中国清代对畴人传记的编写.
Abstract – The Biographies of Astronomers and Mathematicians (Chouren zhuan 疇人傳, hereafter CRZ) edited by Ruan Yuan (1764-1849) is the first Chinese book on biographies of practitioners who specialized in astronomy and mathematics. What interests us is not only how the book deals with these practitioners’ activities, works, and mathematical thoughts —which would mean we use the book as a source to enquire into the biographies of these actors— , but also the activity of writing and editing such biographies in and of itself. The enquiry into the latter subject derives from our curiosity about the efforts Confucian scholars made in Chinese Qing Dynasty to reincorporate the mathematical sciences into a Confucian orthodoxy which ruled over the legitimacy of knowledge in the ancient world. Why were these Confucian scholars at the time enthusiastic about mainstreaming the mathematical study into their philological work? Writing and editing biographies for mathematicians and astronomers is an obvious manifestation for this fact. We try to answer this question by addressing the motivations for these scholars’ work. We will also examine how they composed biographies and how they edited their sources to achieve their aims. In addition, the CRZ is one of the significant references in the Draft Biographies of Confucians (儒林傳稿) which was also edited by Ruan Yuan. We will examine the biographies of some Qing scholars both in these two books, comparing the overlaps and the differences, in order to do a case study on the role of CRZ during the establishment of the mathematical sciences as a part of the Confucian orthodoxy.

Agathe Keller (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE – CNRS & Université Paris Diderot)
Listing biographies in histories of mathematics of the Indian subcontinent
Abstract – The first published text devoted to the history of mathematics in the Indian subcontinent authored by an Indian scholar, was a list of biographies of important Indian mathematicians and astronomers. I would like here to look at the kind of text S. Dvivedin’s (1855-1910/11) sanskrit Gaṇakataraṅgiṇī (River of mathematicians; 1892) produces, reflecting both on its models and its posterity in later histories of mathematics written in the Indian subcontinent. What is the structure of such a biography? What are the historical tropes associated to it? are among the questions that will be raised.

Martina Schneider (ERC Project SAW & Universität Mainz, Germany)
History of (ancient) mathematics in the German biographical lexicon ADB
Abstract – A national biography might seem at first a strange place to look for the history of mathematics, and even more so for the history of ancient mathematics. However, there are quite a few entries on (German) mathematicians, as well as on (German) historians of mathematics in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) – a 56 volume national biography edited between 1875 and 1912 by the historical commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. Who are the authors of those entries? What is the format of such an entry? What do we learn about the history and historiography of (ancient) mathematics? Is it possible to say something about the readers and possible uses of these biographical entries? In my talk I will try to explore this set of questions.

Parts of texts and writing by compilation

Organised by the ERC project SAW (Research Group SPHERE), in the context of the seminar History of Science, History of Text

Venue: Université Paris Diderot , Condorcet Building, room 483A
10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet 75013 Paris – map

March 10th, 2016 – 9:30 am to 5:30 pm

Presentation
The session deals with themes already explored in the previous years: the parts  that can be identified in scientific writings, and what they document; the composition by compilations, and the material environment they require. We will also return to Zellig Harris’s notion of sublanguage, and its possible usefulness for the history of science.

Speakers
Caspar Hirschi, Handwriting in Print: Graphological Publications during the Dreyfus Affair
Jacqueline Léon
, Harris’s sublanguages: intermediary objects for text processing
Florence Bretelle-Establet, Parts and Tables of Contents in Chinese Medical Texts

Programme  pdf version

Caspar Hirschi (Universität St.Gallen, Switzerland)
Handwriting in Print: Graphological Publications during the Dreyfus Affair
Abstract – The rise of graphology as an allegedly “exact” science in the field of handwriting analysis and forensic expertise after 1870 was closely intertwined with new print technologies that enabled the integration of handwritten parts of texts into printed documents. These parts of handwriting could range from single letters to signatures to whole manuscripts. The technology was used in scholarly books, expert reports and public posters. Its purpose was to turn readers of graphological texts into direct witnesses of handwriting analysis and thus to establish graphology as an experimental science according to the positivist ideal of the time. The Dreyfus Affair offered a great opportunity to the champions of graphology to prove the scientific reliability and public usefulness of their science. As soon as the famous «bordereau» was printed in a newspaper, graphologists used the new print technology to highlight the scientific exactitude of their analysis. However, their attempts were not crowned by success as they produced contradictory evidence regarding the authorship of the bordereau and thus added to the public confusion about Dreyfus’ guilt or innocence.

Jacqueline Léon (CNRS, Université Paris Diderot et Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Harris’ sublanguages: intermediary objects for text processing
Abstract – Harris worked out the notion of sublanguage in the wake of the revival of interest in international auxiliary languages, machine translation interlingua, and language of sciences which prevailed in the 1950s. Harris considered that the sublanguage of a given science had an identical structure whatever the natural language in which its statements were produced, so that it could be used by all scientists, regardless of their native language. Appeared in 1968 as abstract mathematical systems, sublanguages have been  used as soon as the early 1970s as intermediary languages for machine translation (of weather bulletins). In the 1990s, Harris and his research group undertook the analysis of the sublanguage of immunology in order to define its informative grammar and determine the informative structure of the sublanguage texts. In my presentation, I will trace this evolution and show how sublanguages, as they became objects for Natural Language Processing, progressively lost their abstract character and their theoretical specificities while gaining empirical features.

Florence Bretelle Establet (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE)
Parts and Tables of Contents in Chinese Medical Texts
Abstract – Relying on a set of a twenty of medical texts written and published in China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I will analyze the ways medical texts were cut into parts and what kinds of order account for it. Tables of contents will be at the focus of my research.

Discussing how language shapes thought

Organised by the ERC project SAW (Research Group SPHERE), in the context of the seminar History of Science, History of Text

Venue: Université Paris Diderot , Condorcet Building, room 483A
10 rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet 75013 Paris – map

February 11th, 2016 – 9:30 am to 5:30 pm

Presentation
Discussions of how language shapes thought, and in particular scientific thinking, became quite prominent in the 19th century, especially in relation to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s writings, and the debates they generated. The session will examine how views of these kinds related to historical approaches of the sciences, and more specifically ancient mathematical sciences. Were some languages put in relation with specificities attributed to the speakers of these languages? Were they put in relation with specificities of scientific knowledge and practice evidenced among these speakers? And if so, how? Were specificities of this kind, or alleged failures, explained in terms of features of the language in which scientific writings had been composed? These are some of the questions that the session aims to explore.

Speakers
Tuska Benes
, Mathematics after the Linguistic Turn of the Early Nineteenth Century: Three Frameworks
Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Encoding language – decoding script: the case of cuneiform
Christine Proust, How thought shapes language: a brief historiographical overview and some examples selected among mathematical cuneiform texts from late Old Babylonian period

Programme  pdf version

Tuska Benes (College of William & Mary, Va, USA)
Mathematics after the Linguistic Turn of the Early Nineteenth Century: Three Frameworks
Abstract –  The early nineteenth century witnessed a linguistic turn of its own, after which European Orientalists increasingly believed language shaped thought.  This paper examines the implications of this linguistic turn for European perceptions of non-western mathematics.  It distinguishes three broad frameworks for imagining how language shaped thought, each with varying results for the perceived autonomy of mathematics.  The tradition of general grammar will be explored first through the debate between Wilhelm von Humboldt and Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat over the intellectual merits of Chinese, a language whose grammar, Humboldt insisted, closely resembled a mathematical equation.  Did the logical features of certain languages better equip their speakers to make scientific discoveries?  The German philosopher and Orientalist Johann Georg Hamann offered a more radical, theological argument for the linguistic determination of thought.  His claim that mathematics itself constituted a language will be examined second.  Did the peculiarities of certain national languages shape how speakers approached mathematics and explain why particular inventions occurred among certain cultural communities?  Thirdly, mapping the origin and genealogical descent of non-western languages within comparative-historical linguistics offered a model for tracking the spread of mathematical ideas. Did the transmission of mathematical knowledge follow the same trajectories as language?

Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum (Freie Universität, Berlin)
Encoding language – decoding script: the case of cuneiform
Abstract – The history of decipherment of the writing systems labelled ‚cuneiform‘ provides an interesting perspective on the role of scholarly presuppositions about language and culture. My contribution will discuss (1) the agency of some 18th/19th century (CE) concepts of correlations between language and script. I will  (2) try to show, to what extent these concepts as well as perhaps the individual linguistic background of the scholars involved shaped the process of code-breaking. (3) Finally, a sophisticated method of encoding from Ancient Mesopotamia shall serve as a starting point towards a view on ‘their’ possible thoughts about language and script.

Christine Proust (ERC Project SAW & SPHERE – CNRS & Université Paris Diderot)
How thought shapes language: a brief historiographical overview and some examples selected among mathematical cuneiform texts from late Old Babylonian period
Abstract – Some historians of Mesopotamia considered that the structure of language commanded the orientation of thought and, based on this, opposed Sumerian and Akkadian mathematical texts. I discuss this assumption through the example of mathematical texts written in Mesopotamia by the end of the Old-Babylonian period (about 17th century BCE).