History of Science 223

History of the Exact Sciences: Trust, Skepticism, and Objectivity

Christopher James Phillips

Fall 2011
Mondays 2-4
Science Center 359
Contact Information:
Office: SC 356
Phone: 617.495.3480
Email: phillips@fas.harvard.edu
Office Hours: Monday 12-2 and by appt.
Introduction:
This course is a general survey of the secondary literature in the history of the exact, or
mathematical, sciences. The focus of the course will be on major themes in the history of
mathematics, and in particular on the way in which mathematical knowledge has been
understood as special or peculiar, both in its historical development and in the relevant
historiography. Questions about whether the history of mathematics is part of, or separate
from, the history of science map onto various historical developments within the field itself.
The course is therefore simultaneously a survey of major ways of writing about the history of
mathematics and a survey of the major developments in the history of mathematics proper.
Despite its specialized and often esoteric nature, mathematics has increasingly been applied
to a variety of moral, political, and social quandaries over the past centuries. This transition
has often been attributed to mathematics' power and objectivity, and in particular to its ability
to reduce the need for trust and banish skepticism. We will return to this claim, and its
manifestation in the historical literature, throughout our discussions.
NB: The focus of the course will not be on technical details; proficiency in university-level
mathematics will be neither assumed nor required. The focus, rather, will be on
understanding how these details are handled (or avoided) in the literature.
Assessment:
A review essay of appx. 2500-4000 words (in the style of London Review of Books or The New
Yorker) for a book or books not assigned for the course will be half the basis (50%) for course
assessment. (They may be from the other or optional reading lists or chosen
independently.) The essay will be due at the end of term but may be turned in at any point.
The topic will be chosen in consultation with the instructor and will ideally build upon one or
more of the assigned books for the course. Active seminar participation is expected, as is
regular attendance, and 50% of the final grade will reflect that participation.
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Tentative Syllabus
Each week will focus on one or two major secondary sources for discussion, alongside
provocative or relevant shorter pieces. All required books should be on reserve in Cabot
Library and ones listed with an asterisk have also been ordered at the Coop. Required articles
are available as PDFs or links on the course website. For access to the website for nonenrolled students, please email the instructor. Other readings are listed each week, in case
students wish to use this topic as a basis for their essay, as part of a general examination, or as
background for future research.
[Wednesday] August 31: Introduction
Orientation, Syllabus
September 12: Historians and Mathematicians
Many historians of mathematics count themselves as former or retired mathematicians.
The field lends itself problematically to historical work: Many mathematicians claim that only
a professional mathematician could do justice to the figures and concepts of mathematics
past. This week we look at one particularly vicious dispute between a historian and a
mathematical critic in the 1970s alongside other articles calling for a new kind of
mathematical history (=history of mathematics?). Along with the other brief articles, the week
raises the question of the purpose of the history of mathematics: why and for whom is it
written?
*Michael S. Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat (1973).
A. Weil, Review of M.S. Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat,Bulletin
of the American Mathematical Society 79 (1973): 1138-1149.
H.J.M. Bos and H. Mehrtens, The interactions of mathematics and society in history:
some exploratory remarks, Historia Mathematica 4 (1977): 7-30.
E.T. Bell, Introduction to Men of Mathematics (1937), pp. 3-18.
Other:
Joseph Dauben and Christoph Scriba, Writing the History of Mathematics: Its Historical
Development (2002). [general resource for the historiography]
Barry Mazur, Imagining Numbers (Particularly the Square Root of Minus Fifteen) (2003)
[a more recent, local, and quirky take on the genre of mathematicians writing popularly
about mathematics]
September 19: Mathematics and Philosophy I: Mathematical Knowledge
Sitting down to write a history of mathematics requires, at least implicitly, a conception of
what sort of thing mathematical knowledge is. Yet, those conceptions have been in fluxand
widely contestedhistorically.
Introduction, Ch. 7, and Ch. 10 of Philip Kitcher, The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge
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(1983), online at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn3:hul.ebookbatch.OXSCH_batch:osouk0195035410

Lorraine J. Daston, Sweet Reason [review of Kitcher, Nature of Mathematical
Knowledge], Isis 75 (1984): 717-721.
Thomas Tymoczko, Introduction and Reuben Hersh, Some Proposals for Reviving the
Philosophy of Mathematics, pp. xiii-28 and Thomas Tymoczko, Afterword, pp. 385398 in Thomas Tymoczko, ed., New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics, rev.
and exp. ed. (1998 [1986]).
Mary Leng, Introduction, pp. 1-15 of Mary Leng, Alexander Paseau and Michael Potter,
eds, Mathematical Knowledge (2007). [the entire volume is a good introduction to the
current status of philosophical questions surrounding mathematics]
Preface, Introduction, and Ch. 4 of George Lakoff and Rafael E. Nez, Where
Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being
(2000).
Other:
William Aspray and Philip Kitcher, eds, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,
Vol. XI: History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics (1988).
Eric Livingston, The Ethnomethodological Foundations of Mathematics (1986).
September 26: Mathematics and Philosophy II: Mathematics as Knowledge
Mathematics has never simply been a set of facts. The field has always been a discipline: a
changing collection of techniques and methods the goal of which was to develop the ability to
come to reliable knowledge about the world.
Thomas Kuhn, Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical
Science, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (1976): 1-31.
Steven Shapin, Robert Boyle and Mathematics: Reality, Representation, and Experimental
Practice, Science in Context 2 (1988): 23-58.
Peter Dear, Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature, Isis 81:4 (1990):
663-683.
Lorraine Daston, Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe
Critical Inquiry 18:1 (1991): 93-124.
*Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific
Revolution (1995).
Lorraine Daston, Review of Dears Discipline and Experience, in Philosophy of Science
64:3 (1997): 519-21.

October 3: Mathematics as Philosophy III: Social Knowledge

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The debate over the origins of mathematics takes an interesting turn when one considers
statistics and probability alongside what has come to be known as pure mathematics. For a
surprising number of cases, mathematical concepts appeared to arise in conjunction with
other domainslegal, moral, politicalrather than simply being applied to those domains
post hoc.
Chs 1-5 and Part III of Witold Kula, Measures and Men (1986).
*Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988).
Ian Hacking, Making Up People [1986], pp. 161-171 in Mario Biagioli, ed., The Science
Studies Reader (1999).
Other:
Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (1975).
Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (1990).
Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900 (1986).
Stephen Stigler, The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900
(1986).
Donald MacKenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930: the Social Construction of Scientific
Knowledge (1981).
No Class October 10 (Columbus Day)

October 17: Mathematics as Philosophy IV: Religion

Previous weeks have raised the issue of what it means to do mathematics, and what sort of
thing mathematics is. In some fundamental ways, mathematicians function as a priesthood
with mathematical knowledge held as sacred, mysterious, and eliteand indeed the
relationship between mathematics and religion runs throughout the last few centuries of the
discipline's development.
Steven Shapin, Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke
Disputes, Isis 72 (1981): 187-215.
David Rowe, Jewish Mathematics at Gttingen, Isis 77 (1986): 422-449.
*Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious
Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity (2009).
Other:
Daniel J. Cohen, Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith (2007).
Massimo Mazzotti, The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Mathematician of God (2007).
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Joseph Warren Dauben, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite
(1979).
Karen Hunger Parshall, James Joseph Sylvester: Jewish Mathematician in a Victorian
World (2006).
October 24: Learning Mathematics
Mathematics sits at the juncture of many pedagogical questions: the subject is both
paradigmatic of classroom experience and yetit is claimedmath can be learned
independently of classrooms and society altogether. Alongside these questions sit others
concerning the relevance and purpose of learning mathematicsis it to master a body of
knowledge, or train a body to be reasonable? Are the tools of mathematics mere crutches or
crucial to the process of knowing mathematically?
*Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics
(2003).
David Rowe, Making Mathematics in an Oral Culture: Gottingen in the Era of Klein and
Hilbert, Science in Context 17 (2004): 85-129.
Chs 3, 8, 12, 13 of Peggy Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and David Lindsay Roberts.
Tools of American Mathematics Teaching (2008).
Other:
Harvey Becher, Radicals, Whigs, and Conservatives: the Middle and Lower Classes in the
Analytical Revolution at Cambridge in the Age of Aristocracy, British Journal for the
History of Science 28 (1995): 405-26.
Kathryn Mary Olesko, Physics as a Calling: Discipline and Practice in the Knigsberg
Seminar for Physics (1991).
Suman Seth, Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfield and the Practice of Theory,
1890-1926 (2010).
Ronald Calinger, The Mathematics Seminar at the University of Berlin: Origins, Founding,
and the Kummer-Weierstrass Years, in idem, ed., Vita Mathematica: Historical
Research and Integration with Teaching (1996).
David Rowe, Klein, Hilbert, and Gttingen Mathematical Tradition, Osiris 5 (1989): 186213.

October 31: Mathematics and Nationalism

Mathematics is sometimes referred to as a universal language, implying that the subject's
notation and meaning travel freely across borders. Historically, however, the subject has been
at the center of fierce debates about the meaning and purpose of mathematics within specific
cultural, educational, and scientific contexts.
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Joan L. Richards, Rigor and Clarity: Foundations of Mathematics in France and England,
1800-1840. Science in Context 4 (1991): 297-319.
Paolo Palladino and Michael Worboys, Science and Imperialism, Isis 84 (1993): 91-102.
Lewis Pyenson, Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited [Response to Palladino
and Worboys], Isis 84 (1993): 103-108.
Chs 1, 2, and 10 of Karen Hunger Parshall and David E. Rowe, The Emergence of the
American Mathematical Community 1876-1900: J.J. Sylvester, Felix Klein, and E.H.
Moore (1994).
David Rowe, Felix Klein as Wissenschaftspolitiker, in Umberto Bottazini and Amy Dahan
Delminico, eds, Changing Images in Mathematics: From French Revolution to the New
Millennium (2001).
Gispert, Hlne, Effects of War on Frances International Role in Mathematics 1870-1914,
in Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research
Community 1800-1945 (2002).
Joan L. Richards, Historical Mathematics in the French Eighteenth Century, Isis 97
(2006): 700-713.
Other:
Lewis Pyenson, Neohumanism and the Persistence of Pure Mathematics in Wilhelmian
Germany (1983).
Nathan Reingold, Refugee Mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933-1941:
Reception and Reaction, Annals of Science 38 (1981): 313ff.
Joan L. Richards, Mathematical Visions: The Pursuit of Geometry in Victorian England
(1988).
Judith V. Grabiner, The Origins of Cauchys Rigorous Calculus (1981).
Roger Hahn, Laplace: A Determined Scientist (2005).
Thomas Archibald, Charles Hermite and German Mathematics in France, in
Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research
Community 1800-1945 (2002).
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, "Scientific Control" in Mathematical Reviewing and
German-U.S. Relations between the Two World Wars, Historia Mathematica 21 (1994):
306-29.
November 7: History of Science vs. History of Mathematics
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Does the History of Science Treat of the History of Science? The
Case of Mathematics, History of Science 28 (1990): 149-173.
Judith V. Grabiner, Is Mathematical Truth Time-dependent? pp. 201-214 in Thomas
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Tymoczko, ed., New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics (1986/1998).

H.J.M. Bos' selected Lectures on History of Mathematics, TBD.
Donald Gillies, ed. Revolutions in Mathematics (1992), chs 1-5, 12, 15. [mainly previously
published papers on the revolution debate among historians of mathematics]
Selections from the Focus Group on the History of Math and the History of Science Isis
(online in September 2011), TBD.
Other:
George Sarton, The Study of the History of Mathematics (1936).
November 14: Mathematics, Models, and Bodily Practices
Herbert Mertens, Mathematical Models, in Models The Third Dimension of Science, ed
Soraya de Chadarevian and Nick Hopwood (2004).
*Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets
(2006).
*Matthew L. Jones, The Good life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz,
and the Cultivation of Virtue (2006).
Other:
Reviel Netz, The Shaping of Deducting in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive
History (1999)
Donald MacKenzie, Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed (2009).
Brian Rotman, Ad Infinitum--the Ghost in Turing's Machine: Taking God out of
Mathematics and Putting the Body Back In: An Essay in Corporeal Semiotics (1993).
Lorraine Daston, The Physicalist Tradition in Early Nineteenth Century French
Geometry, in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 17 (1986): 269-95.

November 21: Modernism

Leo Corry, Nicolas Bourbaki and the Concept of Mathematical Structure Synthese 92:3.
(1992): 315-348.
David Aubin, The Withering Immortality of Nicolas Bourbaki: A Cultural Connector at the
Confluence of Mathematics, Science in Context 10 (1997): 297-342.
Leo Corry, ed., Special Issue of Science in Context: The History of Modern Mathematics
Writing and Rewriting, 17 (2004).
Jeremy Gray, Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics (2008), Chs 1
and 4. Online at: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:NLIB_305787
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Other:
Leo Corry, "From Algebra (1895) to Modern Algebra (1930): Changing Conceptions of a
Discipline. A Guided Tour Using the Jahrbuch ber die Fortschritte der Mathematik" in
Episodes in the History of Modern Algebra (1800-1950), ed. Karen Parshall and Jeremy
Gray (2007).
Paolo Mancosu, From Brouwer to Hilbert: the Debate On The Foundations Of
Mathematics In The 1920s (1998).
Stuart Shanker, Wittgenstein and the Turning Point in the Philosophy of Mathematics.
Leo Corry, Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures (1996).
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, Rockefeller and the Internationalization of Mathematics
Between The Two World Wars (2001).
Karen H. Parshall, and David Rowe, The Emergence of the American Mathematical
Research Community, 1876-1900: JJ Sylvester, Felix Klein, and EH Moore (1994).
November 28: Objectivity
Andrew Pickering and Adam Stephanides, Constructing Quaternions: On the Analysis of
Conceptual Practice, pp. 139-167 in Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and
Culture (1992).
*Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public
Life (1995).
Chs 1 and 5 of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (2007).
Other:
Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (1980).
Leo Corry, The Origins of Eternal Truth in Modern Mathematics: Hilbert to Bourbaki and
Beyond," Science in Context 10 (1997): 253-296.
Claude Rosental, Weaving Self-Evidence: A Sociology of Logic (2008).
More General Resources
There are numerous historical surveys, but nearly all repeat the same basic story line and
actors. The ones below are some of the English-language classics as well as some which
incorporate more recent scholarship:
Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893)
David Eugene Smith, History of Modern Mathematics (1896) and History of
Mathematics, 2 vols (1923) [latter only on elementary mathematics]
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E.T. Bell, The Development of Mathematics (1940)

D.J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics (1948)
O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (1952)
M. Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, 3 vols (1972)
Jean-Paul Pier, ed., Development of Mathematics 1900-1950 (1994) and 1950-2000
(2000) [mainly memoirs from working mathematicians]
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical
Sciences (1997) [with fairly up-to-date bibliography]
Ronald Calinger with Joseph E. Brown and Thomas R. West, A Contextual History of
Mathematics to Euler (1999) [only through the calculus]
Uta C. Merzbach and Carl B. Boyer, A History of Mathematics (2011) [rev. version of
Boyer's 1968 original]
Accommodations for students with disabilities
Students needing academic adjustments or accommodations because of a documented
disability must present their Faculty Letter from the Accessible Education Office (AEO) and
speak with the professor by the end of the second week of the term. Failure to do so may result
in the Course Head's inability to respond in a timely manner. All discussions will remain
confidential, although Faculty are invited to contact AEO to discuss appropriate
implementation.