Title: The unspoken crisis. Reforming mathematical instruction in Scottish and English universities around 1700
Date: 4 p.m. 30th September 2021
Abstract: It is a commonplace that accepted instructional practices in early modern universities are generally not written or talked about. As a result of this silence, scholars have long been unclear, how mathematics, a discipline heavily dependent on visual understanding and recall, was taught, and to what extent lecturers and tutors responded to rapid advances that were being made in the discipline across Europe, but especially in Italy, France, and the Low Countries.
The talk will argue that universities in the British Isles were long averse to change, preferring to hold onto an essentially humanist conception of mathematics focussed on classical authors such as Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, whose works were deemed ‘fit for gentlemen’. It will be shown that moves to bring about reform were only initiated around the turn of the century through a combination of political, economic, and strategic factors, including plans for establishing rival institutions that would offer more enlightened and attractive courses of instruction. Nor were students themselves passive in this development: records show that a remarkable number ‘voted with their feet’, visiting academies on the continent and thus creating additional argument for change.