Reading Euclid: Euclid's Elements of Geometry and its reception in Britain and Ireland, 1570-1700

欧几里得的《几何学原理》写于公元前300年，在埃及北海岸的亚历山大港。它活跃使用和重复使用的悠久历史经历了阿拉伯和拉丁语中世纪以及欧洲文艺复兴时期，两千多年来，它一直是数学培训的试金石，也是新的数学研究的推动力。这个项目着眼于科学革命世纪英国和爱尔兰的欧几里得元素，当时几何证明的标准正受到数学家的积极质疑，但当几何方法也被故意引入其他领域时，最明显的是自然哲学。在1560年至1700年期间，《元素》印制了数十种新版本，它无疑是当时读者最多的数学书籍。我们将研究这些版本和他们所做的选择--关于元素的内容和布局，要包括哪些主题，以及要印刷哪些版本的校样--以帮助理解这本书所占据的独特地位，以及这种地位是如何塑造和保持的。我们还将研究人们在掌握元素时所做的事情。一些人在上面写字；一些人剪下图表；一些人在上面贴上额外的材料。通过观察许多例子，我们将建立一幅早期现代人与这些元素接触的方式--小学生、工人、教师和学者--这将有助于理解这本书在他们的生活和文化中的作用。没有一本数学书籍对早期现代文化有如此大的影响，然而，这一时期的元素从未成为专门研究的主题。拟议的项目将涉及牛津和伦敦为期两年的档案和印刷资料工作。

Euclid's Elements of Geometry was written in about 300 B.C. in Alexandria on the north coast of Egypt. Its long history of active use and re-use passes through the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages as well as the European Renaissance, and it has been a touchstone for mathematical training as well as a spur to new mathematical research for more than two thousand years. This project looks at Euclid's Elements in Britain and Ireland during the century of the Scientific Revolution, when standards of geometrical proof were being actively questioned by mathematicians, but when geometrical methods were also being deliberately brought into other fields, most obviously natural philosophy. In the period from 1560 to 1700 dozens of new editions of the Elements were printed, and it was certainly the most widely read mathematical book of the time. We will study these editions and the choices they made - about the content and layout of the Elements, which topics to include and which versions of the proofs to print - to help understand the unique position the book occupied and how that position was shaped and maintained. We will also study the things people did when they had the Elements in their hands. Some wrote in it; some cut out the diagrams; some pasted in extra material. By looking at many examples we will build up a picture of the kinds of ways early modern people engaged with the Elements - schoolchildren, working men, teachers and scholars - which will help to understand the book's role in their lives and in culture. No mathematical book had such an impact on early modern culture, yet the Elements in this period has never been the subject of a dedicated study. The proposed project will involve two years of work on archival and printed sources in Oxford and London.