Benjamin Wardhaugh

the Many Lives of Euclid

Man Who Made Maths

Euklid auf den Fersen – eine grandios erzählte Reise zu den Anfängen der Mathematik Seit dreiundzwanzig Jahrhunderten prägen Euklids »Elemente« die Welt. Die Zusammenstellung von Fakten über den Raum und seine Eigenschaften – Linien und Figuren, Zahlen und Verhältnisse – bestimmen bis heute Philosophie, Kunst, Musik, Literatur und Mathematik. Dreizehn Bände, die nicht nur Wissenschaftsgeschichte schrieben, sondern auch zu ersten globalen Bestsellern wurden. Benjamin Wardhaugh entstaubt Euklids Vermächtnis und begibt sich auf eine Zeitreise. Von Ptolemaios bis Isaac Newton, von Lewis Carroll bis Max Ernst – hautnah erleben wir den Einfluss der »Elemente« auf die jeweilige Zeit und ihre Protagonisten. Die spannende Geschichte über das Grundlagenwerk menschlichen Wissens.

Begegnungen mit Euklid – Wie die »Elemente« die Welt veränderten

A sweeping cultural history of one of the most influential mathematical books ever written Euclid's Elements of Geometry is one of the fountainheads of mathematics—and of culture. Written around 300 BCE, it has traveled widely across the centuries, generating countless new ideas and inspiring such figures as Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein. Encounters with Euclid tells the story of this incomparable mathematical masterpiece, taking readers from its origins in the ancient world to its continuing influence today. In this lively and informative book, Benjamin Wardhaugh explains how Euclid’s text journeyed from antiquity to the Renaissance, introducing some of the many readers, copyists, and editors who left their mark on the Elements before handing it on. He shows how some read the book as a work of philosophy, while others viewed it as a practical guide to life. He examines the many different contexts in which Euclid's book and his geometry were put to use, from the Neoplatonic school at Athens and the artisans' studios of medieval Baghdad to the Jesuit mission in China and the workshops of Restoration London. Wardhaugh shows how the Elements inspired ideas in theology, art, and music, and how the book has acquired new relevance to the strange geometries of dark matter and curved space. Encounters with Euclid traces the life and afterlives of one of the most remarkable works of mathematics ever written, revealing its lasting role in the timeless search for order and reason in an unruly world.

How an Ancient Greek Geometry Text Shaped the World

Encounters with Euclid

Euclid's Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world. In a sweeping history, Benjamin Wardhaugh traces how an ancient Greek text on mathematics - often hailed as the world's first textbook - shaped two thousand years of art, philosophy and literature, as well as science and maths. Thirteen volumes of mathematical definitions, propositions and proofs. Writing in 300 BC, Euclid could not have known his logic would go unsurpassed until the nineteenth century, or that his writings were laying down the very foundations of human knowledge. Wardhaugh blasts the dust from Euclid's legacy to offer not only a vibrant history of mathematics, told through people and invention, but also a broader story of culture. Telling stories from every continent, ranging between Ptolemy and Isaac Newton, Hobbes and Lewis Carrol, this is a history that dives from Ancient Greece to medieval Byzantium, early modern China, Renaissance Italy, the age of European empires, and our world today. How has geometry sat at the beating heart of sculpture, literature, music and thought? How can one unknowable figure of antiquity live through two millennia?

How Euclid's Elements Built the World

The Book of Wonders

From the reign of Charles II to the early 19th century, a curious Almanac - part 'teach-yourself mathematics', part political satire - promoted the use of science in everyday life and trades. Benjamin Wardaugh tells the story of the rumbustious 'Poor Robin of Saffron Walden', and the rise of popular science in Georgian England.

A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian Britain

Poor Robin's Prophecies

John Birchensha (c.1605-?1681) is chiefly remembered for the impression that his theories about music made on the mathematicians, natural philosophers and virtuosi of the Royal Society in the 1660s and 1670s, and for inventing a system that he claimed would enable even those without practical experience of music to learn to compose in a short time by means of 'a few easy, certain, and perfect Rules'-his most famous composition pupil being Samuel Pepys in 1662. His great aim was to publish a treatise on music in its philosophical, mathematical and practical aspects (which would have included a definitive summary of his rules of composition), entitled Syntagma music Subscriptions for this book were invited in 1672-3, and it was due to be published by March 1675; but it never appeared, and no final manuscript of it survives. Consequently knowledge about his work has hitherto remained extremely sketchy. Recent research, however, has brought to light a number of manuscripts which allow us at last to form a more complete view of Birchensha's ideas. Almost none of this material has been previously published. The new items include an autograph treatise of c.1664 ('A Compendious Discourse of the Principles of the Practicall & Mathematicall Partes of Musick') which Birchensha presented to the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and which covers concisely much of the ground that he intended to cover in Syntagma musica detailed synopsis for Syntagma musichich he prepared for a meeting of the Royal Society in February 1676; and an autograph notebook (now in Brussels) containing his six rules of composition with music examples, presumably written for a pupil. Bringing all this material together in a single volume will allow scholars to see how Birchensha's rules and theories developed over a period of fifteen years, and to gain at least a flavour of the lost Syntagma music

John Birchensha: Writings on Music

Philip Beeley

Yelda Nasifoglu

Libraries and archives contain many thousands of early modern mathematical books, of which almost equally many bear readers’ marks, ranging from deliberate annotations and accidental blots to corrections and underlinings. Such evidence provides us with the material and intellectual tools for exploring the nature of mathematical reading and the ways in which mathematics was disseminated and assimilated across different social milieus in the early centuries of print culture. Other evidence is important, too, as the case studies collected in the volume document. Scholarly correspondence can help us understand the motives and difficulties in producing new printed texts, library catalogues can illuminate collection practices, while manuscripts can teach us more about textual traditions. By defining and illuminating the distinctive world of early modern mathematical reading, the volume seeks to close the gap between the history of mathematics as a history of texts and history of mathematics as part of the broader history of human culture.

Studies in the Production, Collection, and Use of Mathematical Books

Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe

Thomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute quickly descended. Beneath the unedifying invective employed by Salmon, Locke and their supporters however, serious and novel statements were being made about what constituted musical knowledge and what was the proper way to acquire it. This volume is the first published scholarly edition of Salmon's writings on notation, previously available only in microfilm and online facsimiles.

Benjamin Wardhaugh

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