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Introduction

Why Study Mathematical Commentaries?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Karine Chemla  and
Glenn W. Most
Edited by
Karine Chemla  and
Glenn W. Most
Karine Chemla
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Glenn W. Most
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
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Summary

Strictly speaking, this book is not about the history of mathematics, except indirectly. Rather, it is devoted to commentaries, a specific textual form that many practitioners of mathematics, like other scholars active in a variety of other domains, have sometimes chosen in order to carry out their inquiries. To the modern reader, commentaries might look like a rather odd phenomenon: but until early modern times, for an author to write a commentary on a base text of any sort was quite a common choice of genre, and the practice has certainly not disappeared in our own age. By “commentary,” here, we do not mean merely the activity of jotting down one’s thoughts for oneself while reading a text or afterwards, but, instead, deciding to compose not only for oneself but above all for other readers (known and unknown students, colleagues, and others) a kind of text that complies with a base text but remains ancillary to it.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mathematical Commentaries in the Ancient World
A Global Perspective
 , pp. 1 - 50
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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