Is historical mathematics largely true?

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• A.C. Paseau (University of Oxford)
• Wednesday 29 October 2025, 13:00-14:30
• Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Matt Farr.

(Joint work with Fabian Pregel)

Historical mathematics is widely regarded as a repository of truths. It would seem unusually sceptical to deny that, say, early Chinese, Babylonian, or Greek mathematicians established many truths about numbers and shapes, such as Pythagoras’ Theorem or instances of it for specific right-angled triangles. But is this assumption correct, and if so, what exactly justifies it?

To test the assumption, I raise and address a series of objections to it. I’ll look at two case studies in particular, both involving apparently extra-mathematical beliefs that ‘infect’, or in some way threaten the truth of, older mathematics. The first is 18th-century geometry, and the second 19th-century matricial algebra.

This talk is part of the CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar series.

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