Abstract: Historical mathematics is widely regarded as a repository of truths. It would seem unusually sceptical to deny that, say, early Chinese, Babylonian, or Greek mathematicians established many truths about numbers and shapes, such as Pythagoras' Theorem or instances of it for specific right-angled triangles. But is this assumption correct, and if so, what exactly justifies it?
To test the assumption, I raise and address a series of objections to it. I’ll look at two case studies in particular, both involving extra-mathematical beliefs that apparently ‘infect’, or in some way threaten the truth of, older mathematics. The first is 19th-century matricial algebra and the second 18th-century geometry.
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Philosophy of Mathematics Seminar Convenors: Daniel Isaacson and Beau Mount
