1st Edition

Mathematics and the Craft of Thought in the Anglo-Dutch Renaissance

By Eleanor Chan Copyright 2022
240 Pages 19 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

240 Pages 19 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

240 Pages 19 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The development of a coherent, cohesive visual system of mathematics brought about a seminal shift in approaches towards abstract thinking in western Europe. Vernacular translations of Euclid’s Elements made these new and developing approaches available to a far broader readership than had previously been possible. Scholarship has explored the way that the language of mathematics leaked into the... Read more

Introduction: Crafting Thought

1. The Early Modern Picture/Beeld

2. Point

3. Line

4. Surface

5. Body

Conclusion: Thought Crafted

Biography

Eleanor Chan is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Music department at the University of Manchester. Her work focuses on the interaction between word, image and notation in early modern Europe, with a particular interest in the musical and the mathematical. She received her PhD in History of Art from the University of Cambridge and has published widely, with articles on the visual implications of the English cadence, the interdisciplinary interaction between music and art in the English Renaissance, Anglo-Dutch geometry and realism, the Amsterdam city harpsichord case and mathematical visual culture, and the competing editions of Descartes' anatomical treatise.