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R ichard J. O osterhoff . Making Mathematical Culture: University and Print in the Circle of Lefèvre d’Étaples .

2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 125; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ahr/rhaa034

1937-5239

Renée Raphael,

Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies

This rich volume, Making Mathematical Culture, approaches Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (ca. 1455–1536), French humanist and theologian, through the lens of collective biography. Focusing on the relationship Lefèvre had with students and friends and their enduring interest in mathematics, it situates Lefèvre’s circle in the context of the fifteenth-century university and print shop. Richard J. Oosterhoff’s narrow claim is that the mathematical culture associated with the rise of modern science and often understood to have emerged in late sixteenth-century Italian courts should more correctly be situated a century earlier in a different geographical and cultural space: the scholastic stronghold of the University of Paris. In a more general sense, Oosterhoff emphasizes the relevance of mathematics to Renaissance culture broadly conceived, a relevance he claims contemporaries recognized but one often overlooked by modern historians, whose examinations of humanism, religious reform, and print culture often run parallel to studies of period mathematics....