Nine Chapters on Mathematical Modernity

Andrea Bréard is professor of the history of science at the Université Paris-Sud (France). Trained as a mathematician (TU München) and sinologist (LMU München & Fudan University), she obtained PhDs from the TU Berlin and the Université Paris 7. She has taught in mathematics, history of science, and sinology at the technical universities of Munich and Lille, the École Polytechnique, and the universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt. She has also held fellowships from the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and the International Research Consortium in the Humanities (Erlangen), and is an associated member of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” (University of Heidelberg). Her main research fields are the history of mathematics, modern China, and combinatorial practices in games and divination in early to pre-modern China.

“This collection of essays will make great reading for college students interested in Chinese history or in the history of mathematics and sciences. The topics in many essays are worth further exploration and continue to be a fertile ground for research.” (Jiang-Ping Jeff Chen, Mathematical Reviews, September, 2020)“This book is very useful. It is thoughtful and well researched. The inclusion of many, many translations of original source material, from Chinese into English, makes it a valuable reference in that sense as well.” (Joel Haack, MAA Reviews, January 19, 2020)

• 1 Visions of Antiquity.- 2 The Ellipse Seen from 19th Century China.- 3 Filling Euclid’s Gaps.- 4 Negotiating a Linguistic Space in-between.- 5 Discourse Transformed: Changing Modes of Argumentation.- 6 Fate Calculation : The Mathematics of Divination.- 7 Data Management and Knowledge Production in Late Qing Institutions.- 8 Data Management and Knowledge Production in Late Qing Institutions.- 9 Visions of Modernity.