The 3 Best Opinionated History of Mathematics Podcast Episodes
1) The telescope
The telescope offered a shortcut to stardom for Galileo. We offer some fun cynical twists on the standard story.
2) Galileo bad, Archimedes good
Galileo's bumbling attempts at determining the area of the cycloid suggests a radical new interpretation of his scientific opus. Archimedes's work on floating bodies is an example of excellent Greek s...Show More
3) Mathematics versus philosophy, then and now
Divergent interpretations of Galileo’s alleged greatness cut across disciplinary divides: mathematics versus philosophy, science versus humanities. Understanding Galileo means dealing with these funda...Show More
4) Death of Archimedes
Archimedes’s emblematic death makes sense psychologically and embodies a rich historical picture in a single scene. Transcript Archimedes died mouthing back at an enemy soldier: “Don’t disturb my circ...Show More
5) Torricelli’s trumpet is not counterintuitive
There is nothing counterintuitive about an infinite shape with finite volume, contrary to the common propaganda version of the calculus trope known as Torricelli’s trumpet. Nor was this result seen as...Show More
6) Did Copernicus steal ideas from Islamic astronomers?
Copernicus’s planetary models contain elements also found in the works of late medieval Islamic astronomers associated with the Maragha School, including the Tusi couple and Ibn al-Shatir’s models for...Show More
7) Operational Einstein: constructivist principles of special relativity
Einstein’s theory of special relativity defines time and space operationally, that is to say, in terms of the actions performed to measure them. This is analogous to the constructivist spirit of class...Show More
8) Review of Netz’s New History of Greek Mathematics
Reviel Netz’s New History of Greek Mathematics contains a number of factual errors, both mathematical and historical. Netz is dismissive of traditional scholarship in the field, but in some ways repre...Show More
9) The “universal grammar” of space: what geometry is innate?
Geometry might be innate in the same way as language. There are many languages, each of which is an equally coherent and viable paradigm of thought, and the same can be said for Euclidean and non-Eucl...Show More
10) “Repugnant to the nature of a straight line”: Non-Euclidean geometry
The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century radically undermined traditional conceptions of the relation between mathematics and the world. Instead of assuming that physical space was ...Show More