Euclidean Geometry in 19th-Century Culture
Thursday, 1 October 2009 to Friday, 2 October 2009Location: CRASSH
(a) Summary Abstract
The study of geometry was a central pillar of nineteenth-century education, not only for elite groups but also for artisans and auto-didacts: perhaps even more than the classics, Euclid was part of the shared knowledge of Victorian culture. This symposium, hosted by CRASSH and supported by the European Research Council, brought together an international group of literary scholars and historians of mathematics, art history, and architecture to discuss the work of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry in British intellectual and aesthetic life from Romanticism to Modernism. As well as tracing histories of professional and amateur engagement with both old and new geometries, speakers explored the very diverse ways in which the contested prestige of Euclid affected poetry and fiction, education, visual art, and Freemasonry during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
b) Conference Review
The specific aim of the conference was to provide an opportunity for scholars working on nineteenth-century geometry from a range of disciplinary perspectives to share their research and begin to sketch a map of the very many large- and small-scale geometrical practices of thought, language and imagination in Britain in this period. The more general aim was to contribute to the increasing interest among literary and cultural historians in mathematics.
Versions of most of the papers, plus a number of others by scholars not able to attend the colloquium, will be included in an edited collection of essays on Victorian geometry. Another conference on the broader theme of mathematics in Victorian culture will be held in Glasgow in 2011 to encourage developing research on some of the interdisciplinary themes explored at this symposium. At the individual level, a number of speakers at the 2009 symposium have been in touch with me to indicate ways in which their ongoing research has been stimulated by conversations begun there.
