Mathematics and the Military in the early Spanish colonies.
C Edward Sandifer*, Western Connecticut State U
(983-C1-142)
[email protected]
Spanish colonial mathematics books were more concerned with
problems the colonists themselves faced than with abstractions. They
spent a conspicuous amount of energy designing marching
formations, and a good deal formulating gunpowder recipes. We will
see what some texts from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in Central and South American have to say about this.
1
Purposes
to note how Spanish colonial mathematics fits into a
larger pattern of colonial studies
1. Threshold, like writing, that distinguishes some
cultures from others.
2. Microcosm of the development of mathematics
in emerging cultures, more recent, and
sometimes better documented, than ancient
mathematics.
3. Were Belgian, Italian, French colonies different
from Spanish, English, Dutch because they
didn’t export mathematics? Did Portuguese
“change sides?”
to show the continuity of Spanish colonial mathematics
culture, that one book leads to another
to show some illustrations that didn’t make it in to the
College Mathematics Journal article
to promote role models for Latino students
2
Colonial issues
• another way to look at colonialism
• another venue for investigating the link between
mathematics and culture
Other work
• Abayasha Agarwahl – British colonial mathematics
in India, Australia and New Zealand
• Sergio Nobre – Portuguese colonial mathematics in
Brazil
• Elizabeth Rogers – other Spanish Colonial issues
• Bruce Burdick – adding to the list of Spanish
Colonial texts
3
Karpinski
11 texts before 1700
two threads, tangled with arithmetic
military, tabular
1556
1583
1584
1587
1597
Juan Diez Freyle
Sumario
tables, arithmetic
Diego Garcia de Palacio
Diálogos Militares
military
Pragmatica
other
Diego Garcia de Palacio
Instrución náuthica
military
Joan de Belveder
reduciones de plata
tables
1607
Francisco Juan Garreguilla
plata reduzida
tables
1615
D. Alvaro Fuentes y de la Cerda
quentas, y reduccines
tables? (lost)
1623
Pedro de Paz
Arte para aprender
arithmetic, “sin maestro”
Atanasius Reaton
Arte menor de arismética
arithmetic, military. “sin maestro”
1649
1675
Benito Fernandes de Belo
Breve aritmética
1696 Juan Ramón Koninkius
Cubus, et sphaera
4
arithmetic, military
other
1583 Diego Garcia de Palacio
Diálogos Militares
5
6
1587 Diego Garcia de Palacio
Instrución náuthica
7
8
9
1675 Benito Fernandes de Belo
Breve aritmética
www.wcsu.ctstateu.edu/~Sandifer
follow link to Breve Aritmetica
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