Nine chapters on mathematical modernity : essays on the global historical entanglements of the science of numbers in China / Andrea Bréard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bréard, Andrea, author.

Series:

Transcultural research-- Heidelberg studies on Asia and Europe in a global context

Transcultural Research -- Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics--China--History.

Mathematics.

China.

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 281 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2019]

Summary:

The book addresses for the first time the dynamics associated with the modernization of mathematics in China from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century from a transcultural global historical perspective. Rather than depict the transformations of mathematical knowledge in terms of a process of westernization, the book analyzes the complex interactions between different scientific communities and the ways in which the past, modernity, language, and mathematics were negotiated in a global context. In each chapter, Andrea Bréard provides vivid portraits of a series of go-betweens (such as translators, educators, or state statisticians) based on a vast array of translated primary sources hitherto unavailable to a non-Chinese readership. They not only illustrate how Chinese scholars mediated between new mathematical objects and discursive modes, but also how they instrumentalized their autochthonous scientific roots in specific political and intellectual contexts. While sometimes technical in style, the book addresses all readers who are interested in the global and cultural history of science and the complexities involved in the making of universal mathematics.-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Visions of Antiquity

The Ellipse Seen from 19th Century China

Filling Euclids Gaps

Negotiating a Linguistic Space in-between

Discourse Transformed: Changing Modes of Argumentation

Fate Calculation : The Mathematics of Divination

Data Management and Knowledge Production in Late Qing Institutions

Visions of Modernity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9783319936949

3319936948

OCLC:

1035505838