Long-term history and ephemeral configurations
Abstract
Mathematical concepts and results have often been given a long history, stretching far back in time. Yet recent work in the history of mathematics has tended to focus on local topics, over a short term-scale, and on the study of ephemeral configurations of mathematicians, theorems or practices. The first part of the paper explains why this change has taken place: a renewed interest in the connections between mathematics and society, an increased attention to the variety of components and aspects of mathematical work, and a critical outlook on historiography itself. The problems of a long-term history are illustrated and tested using a number of episodes in the nineteenth-century history of Hermitian forms, and finally, some open questions are proposed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1910.13139,
title = {Long-term history and ephemeral configurations},
author = {Catherine Goldstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.13139},
year = {2019}
}