Call for papers: Teaching mathematics in the early modern world
Research workshop: Teaching mathematics in the early modern world
Thursday and Friday 15 and 16 December 2016
All Souls College, Oxford
Call for Papers
Mathematics increased in both its status as a discipline and its social
visibility in Europe during the early modern period. Increasing numbers
of people across different social milieux acquired mathematical skills
and made use of them in the workplace: seafarers, merchants, dialers,
accountants, and architects, to name but a few. Some nations or regions
acquired special reputations for producing mathematicians or numerate
individuals. At the same time, a variety of reasons were advanced for
the importance of learning mathematics and a similar variety of
programmes were proposed to promote the practice of mathematics. While
some institutions remained notoriously disengaged from the teaching and
learning of mathematics, and it remained perfectly possible for young
men and women to pass into adulthood – indeed, to be well educated –
with only a bare minimum of numeracy, others began slowly and sometimes
reluctantly to reform. What arguments did those engaged with questions
about teaching and learning mathematics, whether learners, teachers or
institutions, set out to promote their endeavours? How did questions
such as what to teach or how to teach inform discussion? These and
similar issues will be the subject of this two-day workshop, to be held
in All Souls College, Oxford.
Proposals for papers are invited on all aspects of teaching and learning
mathematics in the early modern world, including but not limited to
curricula, teaching methods, institutions, and individual teaching and
learning experiences. Proposals should include an abstract of no more
than 250 words and a brief CV, and should be emailed to benjamin.wardhaugh@all-souls.
This workshop is part of an AHRC-funded project on 'Reading Euclid: Euclid's Elements of Geometry in Early Modern Britain'.