'"Unreasonable effectiveness"? Historical origins and philosophical
problems for applied mathematics': research symposium.
Second announcement
All Souls College, Oxford
Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 December 2008
This symposium will bring together a group of leading scholars to
discuss 'applied mathematics' from historical and philosophical
perspectives, with the focus of the historical contributions being on
the period between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries.
It is hoped that discussion of the historical origins of particular
applications of mathematics may help to shed light on the
philosophical issues which such applications raise, and vice versa.
The sessions will be based as far as is feasible around the
discussion of pre-circulated papers.
The symposium is fortunate to have the financial support of the
British Society for the History of Mathematics, the British Society
for the History of Science, the International Commission on the
History of Mathematics, All Souls College, and the British Society
for the Philosophy of Science.
Speakers: Kirsti Andersen (Aarhus), Alan Baker (Swarthmore,
Pennsylvania), Henk J.M. Bos, (Utrecht), Shelley Costa, Mark Colyvan
(Sydney), Niccolò Guicciardini (Bergamo), Antoni Malet (Barcelona),
Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Indiana), Michael Nauenberg (California),
Jeanne Peiffer (CNRS), Helmut Pulte (Bochum), Benjamin Wardhaugh
(Oxford), Mark Wilson (Pittsburgh)
Topics to include: ‘From the Bending of Beams to the Problem of Free
Will’ (Wilson); ‘Johann Bernoulli on the mathematization of central
force motion’ (Guicciardini); ‘Brook Taylor as an authority on
perspective in the British eighteenth-century practical
mathematics’ (Andersen); ‘Images as experiments: Steno’s myology,
Viviani, and Galileo’ (Meli); ‘Efficiency versus truth: the status of
mathematics as “applied” by craftsmen’ (Peiffer); ‘The philosophical
problem of applied mathematics’ (Colyvan); ‘The reception and
transformation of Newton’s Principia by continental mathematicians
and philosophers’ (Pulte); ‘“Analogy” and useful mathematics in
Newton's England’ (Wardhaugh).
Organiser:
Benjamin Wardhaugh
A limited number of places are available for observers: these will be
allocated on a strictly first-come basis. The cost will be £40, and
will cover attendance at the conference sessions, with tea and
coffee, and at the conference dinner on 17 December. Unfortunately
accommodation cannot be provided for observers.
To reserve a place, or for any enquiries, please contact Benjamin
Wardhaugh at:
[log in to unmask]
Dr Benjamin Wardhaugh
All Souls College
Oxford OX1 4AL
UK
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