Geometrical Objects:
Architecture and the Mathematical Sciences 1400-1800
Museum of the History of Science
and Worcester College, University of Oxford
19-20 March 2007
Recent scholarship in the history of science has underscored the mutually
reinforcing relationship between “high” and
“low,” or theoretical and practical,
forms of early modern mathematics. As many
historians have shown, mathematicians
of the period were deeply involved in problems of instrument making, surveying,
engineering, gunnery, and navigation. At the same time, the practitioners of
these arts were increasingly concerned with questions of higher mathematics and
natural philosophy as they pertained to the advancement of their craft. In
fact, practitioners appear to have provided an important intellectual and
technical context for many of the period’s mathematical discoveries an
essential development, historians now maintain, in the larger history of the
“scientific revolution.”
Architecture, too, was a “mathematical” art, almost wholly dependent on
geometrical or arithmetic operations of some form or another. The process of
design itself - insofar as it required the application of consistent
proportional rules was largely defined by them, as were many other basic
tasks. Surveying, cost estimates, bookkeeping, and even the use of routine
graphic techniques perspective, scaled orthogonal drawing, and stereotomic
diagrams all entailed a certain amount of mathematical training. Nor were
these skills limited to the design of buildings. Architects also used
calculations in mapping cities, laying out fortifications, and planning
hydraulic projects for gardens, dams, and canals. Military and civil
engineering had long been part of the Vitruvian tradition.
This symposium seeks to explore issues and questions raised by this situation.
To what extent can the architect be considered a “mathematical practitioner”?
What role did architectural practice and building technologies play in the
broader evolution of mathematics? How did
architects see themselves in relation
to mathematicians and scientists? What are the documented cases of contact or
conflict between these groups?
Attendance is free but registration essential.
For further information and a list of speakers see
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/architecture/
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