Geometrical Objects: Architecture and the Mathematical Sciences, 1400-1800
- Submitting institution
-
The University of Manchester
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 41045487
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- ISBN
- 978-3319059976
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- August
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - SALC
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This volume explores the mathematical character of architectural practice in diverse pre- and early modern contexts. It takes an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, which unites scholarship in early modern architecture with recent work in the history of science, in particular, on the role of practice in the ‘scientific revolution’. As a contribution to architectural history, the volume contextualises design and construction in terms of contemporary mathematical knowledge, attendant forms of mathematical practice, and relevant social distinctions between the mathematical professions. As a contribution to the history of science, the volume presents a series of micro-historical studies that highlight issues of process, materiality, and knowledge production in specific, situated, practical contexts. The eleven essays reveal the diverse forms this relationship took, while also highlighting common themes across several centuries. The collection touches, for example, on the interdependence of geometrical design and arithmetic calculation, the embeddedness of architecture in other mathematical disciplines, and the use of measurement and scale drawing.
As editor, Gerbino selected the contributors, ensuring that the volume as a whole addressed overarching research questions. Contributors were chosen to ensure a broad chronological sweep and a range of topics with the subject of investigation. The output for assessment includes Gerbino’s forty-page introduction (pp. 1–41), which reviews the historiography of the subject, examines the methodological obstacles inherent in it, offers an overview of the current state of the field, and sets out an agenda for future research. Specific research questions for each of the four periods covered by the volume are highlighted by Gerbino in the separate introductions (pp. 43-46, 59-60, 135-136, 189-191).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
