Nautical manuals and ships’ instruments, 1550–1800

Schotte, Margaret

doi:10.4324/9781003048503-12

Cited by 23 publications

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“…53 And Margaret Schotte has explored the large variety of paper instrumentsincluding charts, tables and manuals that were used in navigational training and practice. 54 Although working with paper was possible in a range of areas of practice, one stands out as being particularly amenable to this particular material, namely diallingthat is, the construction of sundials. This was, as Jim Bennett has shown, a far more diverse and creative activity than we might suppose.…”

Section: Paper Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

Jardine

2020

BJHS Themes

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Early modern books about mathematical instruments are typically well illustrated and contain detailed instructions on how to make and use the tools they describe. Readers approached these texts with a desire to extract information – and sometimes even to extract illustrations which could be repurposed as working instruments. To focus on practical approaches to these texts is to bring the category of ‘making’ to the fore. But here care needs to be taken about who could make what, about the rhetoric of craft, and about the technique of working with diagrams and images. I argue that we should read claims about making instruments cautiously, but that, conversely, we should be inquisitive and open-minded when it comes to the potential uses of printed diagrams in acquiring skill and knowledge: these could be worked on directly, or cut out or copied and turned into working instruments. Books were sites of mathematical practice, and in certain disciplines this was central to learning through doing.

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Section: Paper Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

Jardine

2020

BJHS Themes

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A Seaworthy Book? Samuel Sturmy’s Mariner’s Magazine (1669) from Conception to Reception

Jardine

2024

Trends in the History of Science

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Beyond the Learned Academy

2023

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The tremendous growth of the mathematical sciences in early modern England was reflected contemporaneously in an increasingly sophisticated level of practical mathematics in fields such as merchants’ accounts, instrument making, teaching, navigation, and gauging. Mathematics in many ways shaped the knowledge culture of the age, extending through the Industrial Revolution to the nineteenth century. While theoretical developments in the history of mathematics have been made the topic of numerous scholarly investigations, in many cases based around the work of key figures such as Huygens, Leibniz or Newton, practical mathematics, especially from the seventeenth century onwards has been largely neglected. This volume, comprising sixteen specially commissioned essays by leading authorities in the history of mathematics, covers the full range of mathematical practice from the seventeenth century through to the middle of the nineteenth century. It coincides with increased historical interest in the social and cultural milieus in which pre-modern and modern science were carried out, and will facilitate and promote further investigations on the practice of mathematics itself.

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Nautical manuals and ships’ instruments, 1550–1800

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

A Seaworthy Book? Samuel Sturmy’s Mariner’s Magazine (1669) from Conception to Reception

Beyond the Learned Academy

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