Robert Goulding . Defending Hypatia: Ramus, Savile, and the Renaissance Rediscovery of Mathematical History . (Archimedes: New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, number 25.) New York: Springer. 2010. Pp. xx, 201. $99.95.
2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 117; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.117.2.594
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)History of Science and Natural History
ResumoPerhaps the greatest accomplishment of Robert Goulding's book is that it rescues from oblivion an intellectual tradition that was of considerable importance in its own time, but has been largely forgotten since: Renaissance histories of mathematics. This in itself is a significant contribution to Renaissance studies, given that humanists of the period famously elevated grammar, rhetoric, and history far above the disciplines of mathematics and the natural sciences. Despite this, as Goulding demonstrates, numerous leading scholars of the period devoted a great deal of time and effort to mathematics, if not to expanding its boundaries then to establishing its past. Not only the oft‐cited Federico Commandino and Bernardino Baldi but also Polydore Vergil, Girolamo Cardano, and Philipp Melanchthon contributed accounts of the history of mathematics, as well as the book's two protagonists—Peter Ramus and Henry Savile. Taken collectively they form an impressive tradition that left its mark on contemporary humanism, as well as on later scholarship.
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