ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Intractable? Poleni, Mathematical Instruments, and the Circulation of the Tractrix

• In Event: Contested Success and Celebrated Failure: The Practice of Mathematical Instruments in Varied Settings II

English Abstract

This contribution reconstructs two mathematical instruments to trace transcendental curves, the tractrix and the logarithmic, designed by Giovanni Poleni and described in a letter to Jacob Hermann published in the Epistolarum Mathematicarum Fasciculus (1729). Poleni presented his machines not just as tools to solve mathematical problems (the construction of curves given their tangents or subtangents) but also with the explicit goal of elevating transcendental curves to match the epistemological status of conic sections. Though the original machines are lost, their descriptions reveal how instruments served as epistemic tools and symbols of prestige. In our talk we aim to show how Poleni's machines became instruments of scholarly self-fashioning within the Republic of Letters. We shall inquire issues of intellectual credit as Poleni’s innovations resembled earlier devices by John Perks. By tracing the life of these instruments, this paper illustrates how mathematical tools could acquire layered meanings—technical, social, and symbolic—through their movement across persons and institutions.

Authors

• Davide Crippa, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences

• Pietro Milici, University of Messina