Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe: Studies in the Production, Collection, and Use of Mathematical Books

Abstract

During the early modern period, hundreds of editions of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry were printed. Individual copies of these editions were often read with pen in hand, resulting in a multitude of physical traces in the books, such as marginalia, notes or marks of ownership. Recent scholarship has emphasized the role of annotation and note-taking in the material history of reading. Owen Gingerich and Renée Raphael have shown that mathematical books were no exception to this, as many of the printed works of Copernicus and Galileo survive in annotated copies. This fascinating new volume of essays combines the material history of the book and the history of mathematical reading by asking how mathematical knowledge ‘got off the printed or manuscript page and into the minds and practices of its readers’ (p. 9). Published in the Material Readings in Early Modern Culture series, the study is based on two workshops organized by the Reading Euclid project at the University of Oxford. The volume focuses on mathematical reading in early modern Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, addressing mathematical texts both in print and in manuscript. The material use of mathematical books provides the main focus. Vincenzo De Risi’s chapter looks at readers’ diverse responses to Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, while Robert Goulding presents a close reading of the problem of proportion in Euclid’s textbook through the manuscript writings of Henry Savile (1549–1622). Mathematical textbooks in particular were heavily annotated by students, tutors or professionals. Some copies were customized, as readers introduced a table of contents or an index by hand. In a wide-ranging survey, Benjamin Wardhaugh discusses material evidence of mathematical practices in the ‘sociable space’ of the printed page. He concludes that elementary textbooks at school were ‘used most heavily and aggressively’, with pupils ‘adding, translating, marking, copying, and re-using’ handwritten notes (p. 243). Kevin Tracey focuses on useful mathematical knowledge in John Seller’s Pocket Book (1677), which was employed ‘as a theatre in which to rehearse and perform mathematical practices’ (p. 277). Building on the foundational study of