[SIGCIS-Members] Material and embodied practices of people doing mathematics, symbolic logic, and calculation

Fri Mar 5 15:38:39 PST 2021

Great topic. Great thread.

You might want to check out Netz' The Shaping of Deduction in Greek
Mathematics
<https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VwggGX0ORLkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=Reviel+Netz&ots=O7iqkYjKcE&sig=9OdPrq82lUfBXLuCfjIceLAMoYs#v=onepage&q=Reviel%20Netz&f=false>.
Bruno Latour wrote an astoundingly rave review.
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281503090_The_Netz-Works_of_Greek_Deductions_-_A_Review_of_Reviel_Netz's_The_Shaping_of_Deductions_in_Greek_Mathematics>
Personally, I failed to get through it.

In a less historical vein though (one reference each, but each is a little
subfield):

The ethnomethodologists have done a series of investigations that are about
as practical/embodied as you can get, at least in their way:
The ethnomethodological foundations of mathematics
<https://www.amazon.com/Ethnomethodological-Foundations-Mathematics-Studies-Ethnomethodology/dp/0710203357>

The distributed cognition folk tackled this too:
Collaboration, distributed cognition, and geometric reasoning
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11412-011-9113-0>

And, my personal favorite, is the lovely work of Jean Lave who followed
people around as they grocery shopped (and which spawned a vast literature
on maths dubbed 'communities of practice'):
Cognition in Practice
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cognition-in-practice/2AF0745B4B8636436A1DF8AAF374BB9E>

david.
--
David Ribes
Associate Professor
Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE)
University of Washington
http://davidribes.com

On Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 2:21 PM Julie Cohn <cohnconnor at comcast.net> wrote:

> For reasons unrelated to the inquiry at the start of this email chain, I
> listened to a podcast called “Drinks with the Deal” that featured Will
> Deringer and a discussion of his book, *Calculated Values, *which “traces
> how numbers first gained widespread authority” in 17th century Great
> Britain (from MIT Press website). I have not read any of Will Deringer’s
> work, but it may be of interest.
>
> -Julie
>
> Julie Cohn, Ph.D.
>
> Non-Resident Scholar, Center for Energy Studies
> Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, and
> Research Historian, Center for Public History
> University of Houston
>
> email: cohnconnor at gmail.com <cohnconnor at gmail.com>
> cell: 713.516.0849
>
> Author: *T**he Grid: Biography of an American Technology** (MIT Press,
> 2017)*
> https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/grid
>
>
> On Mar 3, 2021, at 12:06 PM, Schoenstein, Tasha <
> tschoenstein at g.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, the request made me think of Andrew
> Warwick, *Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical
> Physics (*University of Chicago Press, 2003). I feel like most of this
> book thinks about embodied and material mathematical practices.
>
> Cheers,
> Tasha
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tasha Schoenstein
> tschoenstein at g.harvard.edu
> Ph.D. Candidate, History of Science, Harvard University
> S.M. Candidate, Computer Science, Harvard University
> S.B. Mathematics with Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 12:54 PM Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin <drjoy at joyrankin.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello David and all,
>>
>> Adding my recommendation for: Deborah Harkness, *The Jewel House:
>> Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution* (New Haven: Yale UP,
>> 2007). The whole book is excellent; in terms of your particular interest,
>> David, chapter three addresses mathematics and instrumentation, and chapter
>> five addresses “reading, writing, and doing science” through close reading
>> of prison notebooks.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Joy
>>
>> --
>> Joy Lisi Rankin, PhD | she/her/hers
>> Research Lead for the Gender, Race, and Power in AI Program
>> AI Now Institute <http://www.ainowinstitute.org/> @ NYU
>> <https://www.nyu.edu/>
>> Author: A People's History of Computing in the US
>> <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674970977>
>> Recently: "Bodies into Bits <https://logicmag.io/care/bodies-into-bits/>"
>> and "Whitewashing Tech
>> <https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/whitewashing-tech-why-the-erasures-of-the-past-matter-today-166d0d5e2789>
>> "
>>
>>
>> On March 3, 2021 at 10:13:38 AM, Leif Weatherby (leif.weatherby at nyu.edu)
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>> I'd just add in the vein of Brian's and Sam's suggestions that Brian
>> Rotman's work (especially Mathematics as Sign
>> <https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=415>) carves out a position
>> distinct from formalism, intuitionism, and Platonism, which he calls the
>> "semiotic" account of mathematics, and which is explicitly about
>> "scratching notes on paper" and other material practices of doing math. If
>> people know of follow-up work to his, I would be very interested, I have
>> found him very compelling to read.
>> Best,
>> Leif
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 10:10 AM Sam Kellogg <samkellogg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello David,
>>>
>>> I highly recommend Juliette Kennedy's work on mathematical drawing on
>>> this point—this essay in particular discusses drafting, scratch notes,
>>> drawing at the blackboard, etc.
>>>
>>> Kennedy, Juliette. “Notes on the Syntax and Semantics Distinction, or
>>> Three Moments in the Life of the Mathematical Drawing.” In What Is a
>>> Mathematical Concept?, edited by Alf Coles, Elizabeth de Freitas, and
>>> Nathalie Sinclair, 55–75. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
>>> https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/what-is-a-mathematical-concept/notes-on-the-syntax-and-semantics-distinction-or-three-moments-in-the-life-of-the-mathematical-drawing/95FC242F34EBC88DC3D6749A2E4A6F31
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cambridge.org_core_books_what-2Dis-2Da-2Dmathematical-2Dconcept_notes-2Don-2Dthe-2Dsyntax-2Dand-2Dsemantics-2Ddistinction-2Dor-2Dthree-2Dmoments-2Din-2Dthe-2Dlife-2Dof-2Dthe-2Dmathematical-2Ddrawing_95FC242F34EBC88DC3D6749A2E4A6F31&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=bMQrB1JqPGH3QuzFgKxGwWv8_wlytMz_q_xKdjxXCE0&m=al_Rx7gVpZratUSSzCRMtEW8wkj9M8QRpJi-HdR4YSU&s=ZvIooA9RYnJYitjMQRpEQ0xerf1pt3Dm_bRPhEuDniE&e=>
>>> .
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Sam
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 8:46 AM David C. Brock <dcb at dcbrock.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear All,
>>>>
>>>> I’m wondering if you could point me to some references that treat the
>>>> material and embodied practices — like writing, reading, publishing,
>>>> lecturing — of people doing mathematics, symbolic logic, and calculation.
>>>>
>>>> I’m interested particularly in the era *before* the widespread use of
>>>> electronic computers.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>> +++++++++++++++
>>>> David C. Brock
>>>> dcb at dcbrock.net
>>>> 40 Russell Street, Greenfield, MA 01301
>>>> Mobile: 413-522-3578
>>>> Skype: dcbrock
>>>> Twitter: @dcbrock
>>>> Pronouns: he, him, his
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sam P. Kellogg
>>> he/him // MCC, NYU <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> // samkellogg.com
>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__samkellogg.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=bMQrB1JqPGH3QuzFgKxGwWv8_wlytMz_q_xKdjxXCE0&m=al_Rx7gVpZratUSSzCRMtEW8wkj9M8QRpJi-HdR4YSU&s=btnPYlFtpcF38Bp0oSIXcRL9BA2Ivvcte7jdg18JoU4&e=>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Leif Weatherby
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of German
>> New York University
>>
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