Cultural reception of geometry in early modern Europe | Hacker News Reader

Cultural reception of geometry in early modern Europe

intellectualmathematics.com

61 pointsbingden9 comments

The author has totally overlooked the influence of Islamic architecture, which is widely held to have been a major inspiration on Gothic architecture. There's more to constructing elaborate buildings than being able to draw pointy bits.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/stealing-saracens-how-islam..., England’s greatest architect, Sir Christopher Wren, wrote that what we call "the Gothic style should more rightly be called the Saracen style.”

I like this quote from the article you linked:

> Surely if there is a lesson in all of this, it is that no one “owns” architecture, just as no one “owns” science. Everything builds on everything else.

If we want to understand our history, we need to think of it as different cultures mixing and evolving with and from each other like a complex mesh of both hostile and fruitful interactions.

Some of the richest and advanced cultures often have been multicultural.

This is right. The author is quite loose with influences, though I wont discredit the story of the article for not having a full description of history.

The first Latin translation of Euclid's Elements noted in the article was not translated from the original Greek but via Arabic - by an English monk, who also brought Arabic numerals and translations of other texts on geometry from Arabic. It was Islam that kept the science of Geometry after the ancient Greeks and developed it further.

The Norman conquest of southern Italy including Islamic Sicily was critical to this knowledge transfer. This happened not long before the first Gothic cathedrals appeared. Al-Andalus was also an influence.

Worth noting too that while the Gothic Cathedrals were clearly developed with a geometric influence, none of them have a simple and exoteric geometric structure. Not even the Milan Cathedral mentioned in the article where we actually have some surving discussion of its geometric design has an exact and clear structure to it.

He mentions Amir Alexander's book "Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World". It's a gripping read, I would highly recommend it. Here is a quote:

    On August 10, 1632, five men in flowing black robes convened
    in a somber Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a deceptively
    simple proposition: that a continuous line is composed
    of distinct and infinitely tiny parts. With the stroke
    of a pen the Jesuit fathers banned the doctrine of infinitesimals,
    announcing that it could never be taught or even mentioned.
    The concept was deemed dangerous and subversive, a threat
    to the belief that the world was an orderly place, governed
    by a strict and unchanging set of rules. If infinitesimals
    were ever accepted, the Jesuits feared, the entire world
    would be plunged into chaos.

This might be true, but I would be sceptical if you haven't read the primary sources. There's a website called Atheist History Blog which questions claims of there being a historical conflict between science and religion. Many stories of "martyrs for science" are often not as straightforward as they seem (e.g. Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Hypatia for some *@%$ing reason, etc.). Also, accounts of such a conflict usually blame the Catholic church: See the largely made up story around Christopher Columbus (written in largely protestant America circa 1800) for an example of this.

I think the lesson here is to be as sceptical on matters of history as on mathematics and science.

You would enjoy "The information: a history, a theory, a flood" by James Gleick.

This site is a gift, thank you.

This article would be greatly improved by diagrams and photos of examples.

This is a great post. Thanks for sharing.

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