On the Historiography of Mathematics in Italy

• Autores: María Teresa Borgato
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 40-45
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The historiography of mathematics in Italy has a long tradition dating back to the Renaissance (Bernardino Baldi, 201 biographies in his Vite de' matematici). Moreover, Italian scholars contributed to the transmission and history of science with translations, commentaries and editions of ancient classics, and chronologies were included in encyclopedic treatises in the sixteenth century.

    In a modern sense, however, the historiography of mathematics begins in the eighteenth century, when the history of mathematics was considered an area of the history of human thinking. In Italy it was initially developed as a part of Italian literature and inserted into general works (Giovanni Andres, Girolamo Tiraboschi).

    Critical analysis of mathematical theories and their historical foundations can be found in works of mathematicians like Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Gregorio Fontana, and Pietro Cossali. Giambattista Guglielmini, at beginning of the nineteenth century, provided, with his eulogy of Leonardo Pisano, a widely followed model in the historiography of the century: expositive text and extensive bibliographic notes. An important work, which combined general overview, technical and archival investigation came out later: the famous Histoire des sciences mathématiques en Italie by Guglielmo Libri (4 volumes 1838-41). The historiography of mathematics developed in the second half of the century, after the political unification of Italy, with Baldassarre Boncompagni’s foundation of the Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche (20 volumes), which supplied both an international diffusion and primary sources. Antonio Favaro was the editor of Galileo's collected works, and Pietro Riccardi published a bibliographic work still of great importance, the Biblioteca matematica italiana. In the first half of the twentieth century, two mathematicians became the main historians of mathematics: Gino Loria and Ettore Bortolotti. The historiography of mathematics in Italy has increased with the publication, from 1981 on, of the Bollettino di storia delle scienze matematiche (29 volumes).