Transcript Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Mathematics and the Making of the

Maria Gaetana Agnesi: Mathematics
and the Making of the Catholic
Enlightenment
Massimo Mazzotti - Isis, Vol. 92, No. 4 (Dec 2001)
Agnesi’s personal life
A child prodigy highly influenced by her father
Her fathers will revolving around the goal to
bear a coat of arms and the title Milanese
Patrician - social enhancement
Participation of salon culture that was where
Maria Gaetana first showed her academic
inclinations
Agnesi’s opinion of
empirical knowledge
•
The publication of an oration Agnesi presented
on the prejudices of the studies of women
•
Her philosophical theses that included the view
that “only that in the realm of mathematics that
true knowledge be derived with certainty that
which is already known”
Agnesi’s turn to
Mathematics
•
Agnesi had to be pursuaded not to leave the salon
culture in favour of a life in the cloister
•
She eventually agreed and gave reason later in her
life that
•
“Man always acts to achieve goals; the goal of the
Christian is the glory of God. I hope my studies have
brought glory to God, as they were useful to others,
and derived from obedience, because that was my
father’s will.”
Features of Christianity
at the time
•
The “Catholic Enlightenment” - a multifaceted
cultural and religious reformist movement
•
“The necessity to reform teaching so as to
include materials and methods from the
modern sciences, but without altering the
religious framework.”
•
Return to the native language to establish the
teaching of Christian doctrine
The unusual form of
Agnesi’s textbook
•
Material selection shaped by Agnesi’s belief in
mathematics ability to provide truths through
certainty of it’s subject matter
•
Content shaped by Agnesi’s need to present
her work within the traditional framework of
religious knowledge
•
Agnesi ignored problems that depended on the
knowledge of physics
Agnesi’s abandonment of
mathematics
•
Agnesi fulfilled her wish of a more modest
living to the extent of renouncing the palazzo
and living in poverty
•
This included her focus on the help and
education of vulnerable social groups
Conclusion
•
An enjoyable reminder of the historical
variables that can be considered to provide a
sound argument for events that occur in
specific times and places
•
In this case the unique socio-cultural
conditions and personal life that enabled
Agnesi to publish her popular calculus
textbook in Northern Italy in 1748
•
Any Questions