Early Modern Mathematics:

An Introduction
Northern and central Italy: Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome
Groups of Mathematical Practitioners 1500-1600

Reference: Michael S. Mahoney, Chapter 1 of Michael S. Mahoney, The

Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat (1973), pp. 1-14.
Classical geometers
Cossist algebraists
Applied mathematicans
Artists and artisans
Mystics
Analysts
Astronomers
 Classical Geometers

This group was a product of Renaissance humanism, and was primarily

from Italy and France.
Frederigo Commandino (1509-1575), known as the great translator,
translated into Latin Apollonius’s Conics (1566) and Pappus’s
Mathematical Collection (1588).
Claude Bachet in France composed a Latin edition of Diophantus’s
Arithmetic (1621).
These men engaged in a dual project, of translation and reconstruction
of Greek mathematical treatises. Their work involved a humanist
emphasis on the glorification of Greek culture and Greek mathematics.
 Cossist algebraists

To solve an equation was to find the value of the unknown thing. The word
“thing”, or “res” In Latin and “cosa” in Italian, was the word used for what we
could today call the unknown variable x. Solving equations to find the value
of the “cos” was called “the art of the cos.” Mathematicians in the sixteenth
century who concerned themselves with the theory of equations are known
as the cossist algebraists.
Researchers in the theory of equations came mainly from Italy and Germany.
The best known achievement of this group was Gerolamo Cardano’s book
Ars Magna of 1545. Another important figure is Rafael Bombelli, who
published his Algebra in 1572. In Germany Michael Stiffel was a leading
contributor to the theory of equations.
 Applied Mathematicians
This group was present throughout Europe but especially in Britain and the
Low Countries (Belgium and Holland). Their work involved navigation,
surveying and engineering.
A representative of this group was the Scottish mathematician John Napier,
who invented logarithms in the 1590s. Computation with logarithms
facilitated the production of astronomical tables required in navigation.
Logarithmic methods led to a veritable revolution in numerical computation.
Another applied mathematician was Simon Stevin, a Flemish engineer and
scientist who wrote books in Dutch on decimal computation and practical
subjects.
The applied mathematicians wrote some of their works in the vernacular
rather than Latin in order to reach a larger and more diverse audience. They
did not work in the universities.
 Mystics
During the Renaissance one response to the scholasticism of the universities
was to turn to neo-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean writings. The hermetic
tradition with its interest in numerology and magic was also important here.
The Jewish tradition of the Kabbalah played a role in mystical thinking about
mathematics.
Members of this group emphasized mathematics as a key to the universe.
There were often numerological aspects to their beliefs.
In Wisdom 11:7 of the Bible it is stated that God created “all things in
number, weight and measure.” Religious and even magical significance was
assigned to various numbers.
John Dee wrote the preface to the first English translation of Euclid’s
Elements in 1570. This preface is regarded as an important statement of
Renaissance mystical ideas about mathematics.
An interest in symbols and their supposed significance may have contributed
to the general intellectual atmosphere within which analysis and symbolic
algebra emerged.
 Artists and artisans

This group was centered in Italy and Germany.

Two Important Italian representatives were the artists Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Piero
della Francesca (1416-1492). Alberti formulated the principle of perspective drawing. Della
Francesca developed these ideas and methods in a more systematic and mathematical way.

In Germany Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was a painter and engraver who wrote theoretical treatises
on perspective and proportion.

The work of men such as della Francesca was important in the 17th century in the development by
Girard Desargues in 1639 of projective geometry.

This group worked outside the university.

Piero della Fransesca: The Polyptych of Perugia (1465)
Desargues’ Theorem
If the three straight lines joining the corresponding vertices of two triangles and all
meet in a point (the perspector), then the three intersections of pairs of corresponding
sides lie on a straight line (the perspectrix). Equivalently, if two triangles are perspective
from a point, they are perspective from a line.
 Analysts
The analysts incorporated characteristics of many of the groups above.
They combined the classical geometers’ humanist respect for Greek
knowledge with the cossist commitment to algebra as a powerful
problem-solving technique. They appreciated the value of mathematics
that was effective in applications. With the mystics they shared a desire
to devise a symbolic art of reasoning that would unite all of
mathematics.
A representative of this group was the French mathematician François
Viète who wrote Ars analytica in 1591.
 Astronomers
A major upheaval in astronomy was initiated by Nicolas Copernicus in
his 1543 book Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. Copernicus regarded
himself as a “mathematicus” or mathematician. Astronomy was
conceived of as a mathematical science.
Other important figures were Tycho Brahe, perhaps the greatest naked-
eye astronomer of all time, although not an accomplished
mathematician, and Johannes Kepler, a brilliant young German
astronomer and astute mathematician. Kepler’s Astronomia Nova of
1609 is one of the great classics of the Scientific Revolution.
Copernicus and Kepler initiated the heliocentric revolution in the
history of astronomy.