Mathematics from Manuscript to Print, 1300-1600

Throughout Europe mathematics underwent an important period of development during the cultural transition from manuscript to print in the Renaissance. This volume contains the only complete survey of this development. Several chapters discuss the work of Nicolas Chuquet, whose Triparty appeared in 1484. Other chapters consider technical topics such as figurative numbers and the development of solutions to algebraic equations, as well as broader historical subjects such as Italian, German and French mathematics, and the development of mathematics in general in the period prior to the scientific revolution. The book also considers the importance of practical mathematics in sustaining and furthering the progress of mathematics more generally, along with the interaction between mathematics and other spheres of activity. Mathematics provided recreation and contributed to magical ideas. The use of perspectives in art are contrasted with the development of the mathematical theory of perspective, and economic, social and ideological factors that shaped the prehistory of probability are analysed. A book of interest to historians of mathematics and science, other historians of the culture and ideas of the period covered and other interested mathematicians.Table of ContentIntroduction; PART 1: ITALIAN AND PROVENCAL MATHEMATICS: Fourteenth-century Italian algebra; On an algorithm for the approximation of surds from a Provencal treatise; PART 2: NICOLAS CHUQUET AND FRENCH MATHEMATICS: Nicolas Chuquet - an introduction; The place of Nicolas Chuquet in a typology of fifteenth-century French arithmetics; Concerning the method employed by Nicolas Chuquet for the extraction of cube roots; The commercial arithmetic of Nicolas Chuquet; Chuquet's mathematical executor: could Estienne de la Roche have changed the history of algebra?; How algebra came to France; PART 3: MATHEMATICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: What could we learn from Master Christianus van Varenbraken?; A note on Rudolf Snellius and the early history of mathematics in Leiden; The first arithmetic book of Francisco Maurolico, written in 1557 and printed in 1575: a step towards a theory of numbers; PART 4: MATHEMATICS AND ITS RAMIFICATIONS: Is translation betrayal in the history of mathematics?; Renaissance mathematics (and astronomy) in Baldassare Boncompagni's Bulletino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche (1868-87); Some early sources in recreational mathematics; Cornelius Agrippa's mathematical magic; The market place and games of chance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Perspective and mathematicians: Alberti to Desargues; Why did mathematics begin to take off in the sixteenth century?; Index.