Description: Reactionary Mathematics : A Genealogy of Purity, Paperback by Mazzotti, Massimo, ISBN 0226826740, ISBN-13 9780226826745, Brand New, Free shipping in the US A forgotten episode of mathematical resistance reveals the rise of modern mathematics and its cornerstone, mathematical purity, as political phenomena. The nineteenth century opened with a major shift in European mathematics, and in the Kingdom of Naples, this occurred earlier than elsewhere. Between 1790 and 1830 its leading scientific institutions rejected as untrustworthy the “very modern mathematics” of French analysis and in its place consolidated, legitimated, and put to work a different mathematical culture. The Neapolitan mathematical resistance was a complete reorientation of mathematical practice. Over the unrestricted manipulation and application of algebraic algorithms, Neapolitan mathematicians called for a return to Greek-style geometry and the preeminence of pure mathematics. For all their apparent backwardness, Massimo Mazzotti explains, they were arguing for what would become crucial features of modern mathematics: its voluntary restriction through a new kind of rigor and discipline, and the complete disconnection of mathematical truth from the empirical world—in other words, its purity. The Neapolitans, Mazzotti argues, were reacting to the widespread use of mathematical analysis in social and political arguments: theirs was a reactionary mathematics that aimed to technically refute the revolutionary mathematics of the Jacobins. Reactionaries targeted the modern administrative monarchy and its technocratic ambitions, and their mathematical critique questioned the legitimacy of analysis as deployed by expert groups, such as engineers and statisticians. What Mazzotti’s penetrating history shows us in vivid detail is that producing mathematical knowledge was equally about producing certain forms of social, political, and economic order.
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Book Title: Reactionary Mathematics : A Genealogy of Purity
Item Length: 9in
Item Height: 1in
Item Width: 6in
Author: Massimo Mazzotti
Publication Name: Reactionary Mathematics : a Genealogy of Purity
Format: Trade Paperback
Language: English
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication Year: 2023
Type: Textbook
Item Weight: 17.6 Oz
Number of Pages: 352 Pages
