Neal Rhetoric

Hist. Sci.
, xxxvii (1999)
THE RHETORIC OF UTILITY: AVOIDING OCCULT

ASSOCIATIONS FOR MATHEMATICS THROUGH
PROFITABILITY AND PLEASURE
Katherine Neal
University of Sydney
If rhetoric is the art of persuasion, then mathematics may seem to be its antithesis. This
is believed, not because mathematics does not persuade, but rather because it seem-
ingly needs no art to perform its persuasion. The matter does it all; the manner need
only let the matter speak for itself.1
Recent work by R. S. Westman, Mario Biagioli, J. A. Bennett, Peter Dear, Alan

Gabbey and others has shown how Renaissance mathematicians tried to assert their
intellectual authority and raise their status among other intellectuals.2 With the ex-
ception of Biagioli’s wide-ranging survey of the different kinds of mathematical
practitioners and their different levels of success promoting themselves, historical
analysis has tended to focus on the ways in which mathematicians were able to
develop their “art” to show its importance for “scientia”. By attempting to demon-
strate how their techniques could lead to certain knowledge, mathematicians effec-
tively challenged the increasingly beleaguered natural philosophers. It would be
naïve to assume, however, that even the most dazzling mathematical results could
be sufficient in themselves to persuade Renaissance intellectuals to think of math-
ematics as anything more than what amounted to a bag of tricks. Accordingly, math-
ematicians took active steps to persuade their contemporaries of the importance of
mathematics. The aim of this paper is to show how rhetoric played an important
role in the mathematicians’ strategies.
It would no doubt be possible to provide a Biagioli-like typology of all the rhe-
torical strategies used by different mathematicians throughout Europe, but this pa-
per restricts itself to a consideration of English mathematicians, and focuses upon
the rhetorical claim that mathematics can be useful in a wide range of practical
everyday pursuits. The development of a rhetoric of utility in the Scientific Revolu-
tion is, of course, a familiar story but its vigorous use in mathematics textbooks has
hardly been noticed. Another aspect of this rhetoric, which this paper seeks to bring
out, is its use in dispelling the common belief that mathematics was an occult, even
a demonological, pursuit. Although, as we shall see, the occultist associations of
mathematics during this period constituted an important aspect of its public per-
ception, this has hardly been discussed in the historical literature. The post-Refor-
mation period, with its religious conflicts and witch crazes, made it all the more
expedient to demonstrate one’s religious orthodoxy or, at least, to demonstrate that
0073-2753/99/3702-0151/$2.50 © 1999 Science History Publications Ltd

152 · KATHERINE NEAL
one was not unorthodox. If mathematics was to be regarded as a useful and advan-
tageous pursuit, it would have to be purged of its occult associations.
The common perception of mathematics in early modern England was that it
was not only a difficult and tedious pursuit but also closely associated with occult
and illicit practices. It became very important for mathematical practitioners, par-
ticularly those who worked in areas concerned with the pragmatic interests of crafts-
men, to break away from occultist tradition. One method for accomplishing this
separation was to utilize a rhetoric of utility, a technique of persuasion that centred
upon stressing the practical uses of mathematics, as one of their tactics to publicize
their conception of mathematics, as well as to defuse hostility and obtain patrons
and students.3 The practical, vernacular mathematics texts used their extended ti-
tles and epistles “to the reader”, as well as their instruments and the problems them-
selves, to portray mathematics as vital to such useful activities as astronomy,
navigation, surveying, gunnery, architecture and mensuration. These sections, to-
gether with the type of problems solved in the texts, attempted to persuade the
readers that mathematics could be both profitable and pleasurable. The practition-
ers constructed their arguments and their problems so that the utility of mathemat-
ics could be used to defuse their contemporaries’ indifference to and hostility towards
their discipline; they used this rhetoric in order to sell their texts, and as a technique
to persuade their audience that mathematics was worth supporting and studying.
Mathematics in this period was, however, a diverse set of practices, and many
types of persuasive techniques were developed.4 This paper will concentrate upon
the rhetoric of a certain type of practitioner, made prominent in the work of E. G. R.
Taylor: the practitioners working in the vernacular and often urban tradition of
English practical mathematics, who were usually associated with the use of instru-
ments for observation, measurement and calculation.5 Other forms of mathematical
practice, such as certain aspects of astronomy and more theoretically oriented texts,
called upon different sorts of persuasive techniques. Moreover, I shall also explore
to what extent the possibilities for developing mathematical practice were shaped
by the local setting. Did local demands and restrictions make certain types of both
mathematical and persuasive techniques more viable than others?
Two of the classic texts that cover this period are E. G. R. Taylor’s Mathematical
practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (1954) and D. W. Waters’s The art of
navigation in England in Elizabethan and early Stuart times (1966). These are
foundational works, and they both mention the emphasis on utility found in practi-
cal mathematics texts, but they do not consider why the rhetoric of utility was
considered so important by these authors. It is as though Taylor and Waters, taking
it for granted that mathematics is useful, saw this talk of utility merely as a matter
of fact. Additionally, although Taylor occasionally remarks upon mathematics’ oc-
cult associations, she never discussed this in any detail, and failed to see the link
between such contemporary attitudes and the need of practitioners to utilize a rhetoric
of utility. So, although both the low level of mathematical activity and its occult
associations in the second half of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the
THE RHETORIC OF UTILITY · 153
seventeenth are acknowledged, no corrective persuasive strategies were recognized

to be necessary by Taylor and Waters. Indeed, in both Taylor’s and Waters’s works
there is an implicit but obvious judgement that the triumph of mathematical practi-
tioners was inevitable.
The more recent work on practical mathematics of J. A. Bennett has also briefly
discussed the promotion of mathematics on the basis of its utility.6 The focus of his
work, however, is on establishing the practical mathematical sciences as a plausi-
ble candidate for a source for the mechanical philosophy. Likewise, although Stephen
Johnston has noted the use of utility in putting “the mathematicalls” in a positive
light, generally his work concentrates on describing the roles of instruments in
promoting practitioners’ roles.7 Johnston’s work on the identity of mathematical
practitioners in sixteenth-century England briefly discusses both the rhetoric of
utility and mathematics’ associations with magic, but again it seems true to say that
these issues have never been explored in any detail.
The association of mathematics with magic is particularly under-researched. In
the Companion encyclopaedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical
sciences, for instance, there are no entries in the index for either magic or the oc-
cult.8 Additionally, scholars such as John Henry have noted that “mathematical
magic” has not yet received sufficient scholarly analysis, and its role is, conse-
quently, difficult to assess with confidence.9 Although Frances Yates provocatively
enquired if mathematics was “for Bacon, too much associated with magic and the
middle world of the stars” to be emphasized in his method, she did not delve into
the association between mathematics and magic in any detail. Peter Zetterburg in-
vestigates the assumption of the “vulgar” that the gadgets connected with
“mathematicks” were the “result of a dangerous confederacy with spirits and de-
mons”.10 He attributes this association to “gossip, misunderstanding, and fable”, as
well as to the extravagant claims of the mathematicians concerning the power of
their devices. This extremely suggestive study, however, is primarily concerned
with automata and mechanical devices, and although it makes a promising begin-
ning, it leaves out a variety of pertinent factors. William Eamon’s very interesting
examination of the association of the mechanical arts with magic also examines
automata; however, it mainly concentrates on the relationship between magic and
technology.11 Additionally, Mordechai Feingold has explored the role of the occult
tradition in the English universities in general. His broad-ranging study at least
pointed out that “For the upper classes these studies [mathematics and the occult
sciences] carried dangerous connotations”.12 Otherwise, the association between
mathematics and magic is confined mainly to extremely well known cases such as
John Dee.13
To understand the development and utilization of claims of mathematics’ utility
as a persuasive device, we must first explore why such a technique was needed.
Therefore, I shall discuss mathematics’ dubious reputation and some of the reasons
why mathematics was believed to be associated with occult practices. After inves-
tigating the types of complaints made against mathematics, I shall examine the
factors that made it possible to create a new vision of mathematical practice. Sec-
ondly, an examination of the early modern English, vernacular mathematical litera-
ture will show how the rhetoric of utility was used in the attempts to negotiate a role
for mathematical practitioners in early modern England.14 Not only the text, but the
problems themselves were shaped by the need to show that mathematics could be
both profitable and pleasurable. Yet one should keep in mind that although this
rhetoric played an important part in creating a social space for mathematical prac-
tice, it should not be accepted uncritically as an indication of the actual “practical-
ity” of the mathematicians’ work, or necessarily as an indication of strong links
with craftsmen. I will investigate, in particular, the alliances that practitioners as-
pired to create with navigation and exploration in order to examine if there was
sometimes a gap between their proclamations and performances. Finally, I shall
briefly discuss factors other than the rhetoric of utility that might have aided in
dissociating mathematics from magic. Although the rhetoric of utility was an im-
portant factor in persuading practitioners’ audiences that mathematics was a profit-
able, instead of a dangerous, activity, other issues, such as natural magic’s changing
relationship with natural philosophy, should also be taken into account.
A RUINOUS REPUTATION
The utilization of a persuasive technique for supporting the value of mathematical

practice was vital, due to mathematics’ dubious reputation. One of the difficulties
that practitioners needed to overcome in the period 1550–1650 was that mathemat-
ics was often linked to magic, and the use of it was sometimes taken as a sign that
a practitioner was in league with spirits and demons.15 For instance, John Aubrey,
in his discussion of Thomas Allen (1542–1632), one of the best mathematicians
and astrologers of that time, says “In those dark times astrologer, mathematician,
and conjurer, were accounted the same things; and the vulgar did verely beleeve
him to be a conjurer”.16 Allen’s servant apparently encouraged this point of view by
telling stories of meeting “the spirits coming up his [Allen’s] stairs like bees”, and
the story of a maid mistaking Allen’s watch for a devil and throwing it into the moat
is well known.17 Indeed, Aubrey’s Brief lives is full of such stories; he tells us that
“the children dreaded [John Dee] because he was accounted a conjurer”,18 and that
the country people had similar beliefs about William Oughtred (1574–1660).19
Moreover, Aubrey makes the earlier perception of mathematics clear when he re-
lates that at the beginning of this period authorities “burned Mathematical bookes
for Conjuring bookes”.20
Mathematics, in Aubrey’s work, also appears to be a dangerous course of study,
or an occupation fit only for those who had no other options. One of Oughtred’s
students, a certain Mr Austin, studied mathematics so much “... that he became
mad, fell a laughing, and so dyed”, while Sir Charles Cavendish (1591–1654) is
described as “a little, weake, crooked man” whom “nature [had not] adapted for the
court nor camp” and who therefore took up mathematics.21
Similarly, the association between magic and mathematics can be seen in A

discoverie of sundrie errours (1582) when the author, Edward Worsop, suggested
that this was merely the result of a Roman Catholic conspiracy to undermine the
usefulness of mathematics. The Catholics, according to Worsop, had “fedde the
people with scumme and drosse ... they brought in superstition and idolatrie: so in
stead of the pure Mathematicall knowledges, they used coniurations, sorceries, in-
vocations of spirits, enchauntments, and other unlawfull practices, under the names
of Divinatorie and Judiciall Astriligie”.22 But this, of course, was merely “the abus-
ing and contemning of the Mathematicalls”. For Edward Worsop, it seems clear
that the association of mathematics with astrology was sufficient to link it to occult
practices, but to make his point more forcefully he exploited the Protestant belief
that many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church were based upon super-
stition and the illicit use of occult notions. Having suggested that the common
image of mathematics was the result of the Papists’ desire to suppress useful knowl-
edge, Worsop immediately went on to utilize the rhetoric of utility by dwelling on
the usefulness of mathematics to navigation, makers of almanacs, business, and, of
course, surveying to persuade his readers that “if a man have a Mathematicall head,
& mathematicall art, that man is to be reputed a most excellent and most necessarie
member of the comman weale”.23 Thus one way legitimization could be pursued
was by excluding the dangerous and undesirable, while simultaneously emphasiz-
ing usefulness and pleasure.
Francis Osborne, in his Advice to a son (1656), also shows us not only the earlier
attitude towards mathematics, but that the rhetoric of utility was making progress
towards replacing the more hostile point of view. He makes it clear that no study is
worthwhile unless it will lead to profit, and that mathematics is such a useful skill.
He also, however, describes the depth of the older feelings against mathematics,
stating “my memory reacheth the time, when the Generality of People thought her
most usefull branches; spels, and her Professers, Limbs of the Devill”, and he adds
that when Oxford created a chair of mathematics, “Not a few of our then foolish
Gentry, refusing to send their sons thither, lest they should be smutted by the Black
Arts”.24 The accuracy of Osborne’s recollection is confirmed in a letter of James,
Lord Ogilvy to his grandson, written in 1605, in which he worries about young
scholars at the university becoming involved with “magick” and “necromancy”
which are “the greatest sins against God that can be ...”.25
MATHEMATICS AND MAGIC
There are a variety of reasons for the association of mathematics with the occult.
Importantly, the “magicians” themselves claimed there was a close connection. For
instance, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in his De occulta philosophia (1533), stated:
The mathematical disciples are so necessary and cognate to magic that, if any-
one should profess the later without the former, he would wander totally from
the path and obtain the least desired result.26
It appears that Agrippa believed that when a magician was learned in natural phi-
losophy and mathematics, particularly in arithmetic, music, geometry, optics, as-
tronomy and mechanics, he could do “marvellous things”.27 In England, there were
enough mathematicians reputed to be connected with occult practices to keep the
association alive in the public’s mind. There are, of course, the famous examples of
John Dee and Thomas Allen, but such figures as Gabriel Harvey and John Fletcher,
a fellow of Caius College, were also linked both to mathematics and occult stud-
ies.28 There are also literary examples that show the cultural strength of these ties;
the most famous was Dr Faustus, of course, said to be “the most famous name of all
the Mathematicks that lived in his time”, but Friar Roger Bacon was almost as well
renowned, as can be seen in “The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay”, a popular play by Robert Greene (1594, reprinted in 1599, 1630 and
1655).29
Another factor in mathematics’ association with occult practices is, as previ-
ously mentioned, its ties to astrology. Arabic scholars had earlier provided Euro-
peans with “a comprehensive and highly organized system of occult science” in
which astrology played an important role.30 For instance, Agrippa believed that
mathematical magic belonged to “the middle celestial world of the stars”.31 Indeed,
he felt that from “abstract, mathematical and celestial things we receive celestial
virtues” that might lead to predictions of the future.32 In particular, astrology was
believed to be derived from arithmetic and geometry.33 The Church was always
opposed to judicial astrology because it held that the idea of astral determination
was incompatible with Christian doctrines of free will and moral autonomy, although
a number of Anglican clergymen were not above branding judicial astronomy as a
“Popish” practice.34 Many educated lay-people, on the other hand, regarded judicial
astrology with “profound suspicion”,35 because of the ease with which it could be
exploited by charlatans. These negative connotations were bound to impinge upon
mathematicians, many of whom did earn money through astrological consultations.
Perhaps one of the major problems confronting the mathematical practitioner
who wished to show the practical utility of mathematics was the very fact that the
workings of automata and other mechanical devices were all too often attributed to
necromancy and demonology. Even university-trained intellectuals in the early mod-
ern period tended to think of machines as devices that operated by occult means. In
the Scholastic tradition natural objects which had the ability to act on other passive
objects were held to operate either by virtue of their manifest qualities (hotness,
coldness, dryness, or wetness), or by virtue of non-manifest, occult qualities (such
as magnetism or other qualities which could not be seen to derive from, or be re-
ducible to, the four manifest qualities). By analogy, mechanical contrivances which
were capable of performing marvellous feats were also held to work by occult
means. It is this background that John Wilkins had in mind when he called his
popular explanation of the workings of simple machines, Mathematicall magick
(1648). Neither Wilkins, nor any other educated man, believed that the magic of
machinery depended upon the inner machinations of demons, but it seems that
there were plenty who did appear to believe this. In the popular consciousness, a
mathematical wizard who could design and build a machine capable of performing
astonishing feats must have enlisted the aid of demons.
A final reason for the association of mathematics with magic was the obvious
use of mysterious symbols and diagrams in mathematical textbooks. Keith Thomas
has pointed out that there was a “widespread conviction that anything mysterious
might have a diabolical origin”,36 and, as Richard Kieckhefer has noted, magic was
intimately bound up with writing, especially mysterious writing, like rune inscrip-
tions, or the squiggles of mathematics.37 Many texts included at least geometric
drawings which the uninitiated might take for conjuring devices. Several of the
early works on arithmetic and algebra, ranging from Robert Recorde’s The whet-
stone of witte (1557) to John Tapp’s The path-way to knowledge (1613), included
“cossike” notation, an early form of algebraic symbolism, which might have looked
magical to the uninformed eye. Famously, reformers in the reign of Edward VI
destroyed mathematical manuscripts at Oxford because they believed them to be
conjuring books. Additionally, as late as 1644 when sequestrators seized the papers
of Walter Warner, they were said to be “much troubled at the sight of so many
crosses and circles in the superstitious algebra and that black art geometry”.38 Other
books, such as John Blagrave’s The mathematical iewel (1585), as Zetterburg has
pointed out, included texts of marvellous-looking instruments coupled with ex-
travagant claims of the instruments’ capabilities. Thus many visual aspects of math-
ematical texts might have encouraged suspicions.
Not all criticisms of mathematics, however, were associated with magic. Roger
Ascham, in The scholmaster (1570), supplies a different sort of reason to avoid
studying mathematics, saying
Some wittes, moderate enough by nature, be many times marde by over moch
studie and use of some sciences, namelie, Musicke, Arithmetick, and Geometrie.
Theis sciences, as they sharpen mens wittes over moch, so they change mens
maners over sure, if they be not moderately mingled, and wiselie applied to
sum good use of life. Marke all Mathematicall heades, which be onely and
wholy bent to these sciences, how solitarie they be themselves, how unfit to
live with others, and how unapte to serve in the world.39
Thus, even when mathematics was not directly linked to magic, studying it too
intensely was deemed to be dangerous. Ascham here clearly identifies mathematics
as a potentially morally dangerous pastime. Following such studies could lead to
losing one’s sense of civic duty, and did nothing to further the commonwealth.
Civic humanism encouraged forms of knowledge that could take place in the world
and be expressed as active service; a solitary life was rejected. Moreover, Ascham
did not reach this position out of ignorance: he was the Cambridge mathematical
lecturer from 1539 to 1541.40 Yet although this quotation is not, in itself, encourag-
ing, it does suggest a possible route that mathematical practitioners might take in
order to reverse the generally unfavourable impression of their arts. If the
practitioners could show that their arts made men more fit to serve the common-
wealth, that their arts were practical, profitable, and pleasurable, they might hope
to overcome both the indifference to, and the hostility towards, mathematics.
FORMULATING PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES
Steven Shapin and Peter Dear have provided detailed accounts of how the burgeon-
ing seventeenth-century English experimental community found rhetorical tech-
niques for supporting their statements when the use of ancient authority was
disavowed as a viable strategy.41 They argue that highly detailed narrative accounts
of experiments and observations were used as a means of obtaining authority for
experimental assertions.42 Mathematics, on the other hand, was viewed by some
experimentalists, such as Robert Boyle, as being relatively inaccessible due to its
technical vocabulary and special techniques; its incorporation into experimental
activities, it was feared, might restrict the size of the practising experimental com-
munity.43 Additionally, Dear points out that the authority for the mathematical con-
tributions to the Philosophical transactions “seems to have lain somewhat in doubt,
since mathematical forms of argument and demonstration could not be fitted read-
ily into the usual form of presentation”.44 The early modern English mathematical
practitioners, however, share a common goal with experimental scientists of this
period: they were trying to persuade their audience of the validity of their activities.45
In many circumstances, persuading others requires no great rhetorical creativity,
but merely the ability to anticipate how the reader can be soothed and reassured as
to the correctness of one’s argument. Persuasion requires a sense of the background
of the readers and an anticipation of the responses that they are likely to make.46
Two factors of the background of possible early modern readers will be considered.
First, the beginnings of a movement towards a “plain style” of language, coupled
with claims that the texts would not be too difficult to be useful. Second, and more
importantly, the developing belief that the primary end of knowledge, and its main
justification, was the benefit of man’s earthly estate.
A “PLAIN STYLE”
Mathematical practitioners became proponents of a language of ease and accessi-

bility. A common theme often drawn on in prefaces and title pages was the easiness
of mathematical practice. By stressing facility, humanists’ edicts against obscurity
and deliberate difficulty could be circumvented.47 Perhaps this plainness of style
was also partially an attempt to show that they did not deal in the obscure obfuscations
of the magicians. Magical texts were notoriously mysterious and difficult to under-
stand. Additionally, speaking plainly had, in this period, its own persuasive effects. It
can be thought of as a rhetoric that denies that it is rhetoric.48 This was a tactic some-
times employed by the mathematical practitioners. Edmond Wingate (1596–1656),
educated at Queen’s College, Oxford and a follower of the lectures at Gresham
College, was a tutor to Princess Henrietta in France. Although he was later a land-
owner, a Justice of the Peace, and a Member of Parliament, he was also intermit-
tently a mathematical practitioner.49 In his Arithmetique made easie (1630), one of
the most popular arithmetics of his day, he claimed that “Arithmetique needes not
the Logicians arguments, nor the Rhetoricians Eloquence to prove or parswade the
usefulnesse thereof to the world, every mans particular occasion, to use it, is suffi-
cient to satisfie any man in that point”.50 In other words, he asserted that mathemat-
ics did not need rhetoric to persuade people as to its usefulness. Plainness and
simplicity were often claimed as virtues by mathematical texts. Wingate further
argued that many men who would have liked to learn mathematics despaired, be-
cause they had encountered texts that were both “tedious and obscure”. As a result
of these textual difficulties, intricate branches of arithmetic, such as multiplication
and division, “perplex the new Practitioner, that hee takes them to be Hercules
Pillers, and writes upon them Non plus ultra”.51 His work, on the other hand, was
said to be easy to use.
Of course, to a certain extent, Wingate might mainly have been trying to increase
the sales of his texts by claiming that they were somehow “easier” than others.
Certainly the content of his Arithmetique made easie, which included a typical
discussion of number, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and roots, to-
gether with the usual explanation of the rule of three, the golden rule, rule of fel-
lowship, and rule of false position, was very similar to previous arithmetics except
for its inclusion of logarithms. The very popularity of logarithms upon their intro-
duction, however, should remind us how difficult multiplication, division, and the
extraction of roots were seen to be in this period.
The practitioners claimed that mathematics’ difficulties could be overcome with
a plain but clear style. John Tapp, whose work centred mainly around navigation, in
the extended title of his The path-way to knovvledge (1613), stated that his book
was “Digested into a plaine and easie methode by way of Dialogue, for the better
understanding of the learners thereof ”.52 If one compares Tapp’s work to Recorde’s
The whetstone of witte (1557), the contents, mainly numeration, addition, subtrac-
tion, multiplication, division, coupled with the usual rules of practice and a brief
explanation of “cossike” numbers, is almost identical. In some ways, however, it is
“easier” as it leaves aside Recorde’s discussions about the nature of number en-
tirely, bypassing Recorde’s concern with the question of how exactly fractions and
“surds”, or irrationals, should be understood if number means an entity built up
from units. Thomas Blundeville (fl. 1560–1602) was a landed gentlemen who was
a mathematical tutor in the households of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Justice Windham.
His work was oriented towards the instruction of young gentlemen, especially in
the use of maps, globes, instruments and navigation.53 Blundeville declared that
one of his texts contained “a verie easie Arithmeticke so plainlie written as any man
of mean capacite may easilie learn the same without the help of any teacher”; while
Worsop, in his A discoverie of sundrie errours ... (1582), stated: “I, a simple man
among common people, have set forth this discourse to their behoofe, by the playnest
waies I could devise, and for their easiest understanding ... I have thought good by
a plaine and popular discourse, to laie open unto the understanding of every reason-
able man....”54 Thus one tactic to persuade the intended audience of the value of
mathematics was to claim that it was written in a plain style that made it easy to
learn. Magic, of course, was traditionally written in an obscurantist way to ensure
that only the adept could understand it. By claiming that their style ensured that
everyone could understand their texts, writers were dissociating themselves from
magic. The strategy of emphasizing the utility of mathematical practice was, how-
ever, much more widely used than the stressing of plainness of style.
THE ENGLISH CONTEXT
To understand the appeal of the argument based on utility, and why the practition-
ers believed this argument might be able to persuade their intended audience that
mathematics was a profitable activity that had no dangerous associations, we must
examine the broader context. In the period around 1500 there was not a great de-
mand for mathematical skills. England was, in some respects, a “backward” coun-
try, without a powerful navy, with a largely rural population, and with only wool
production and the strong cloth industry as sources of wealth.55 Although in the
sector of foreign trade large English companies were created from around 1553, math-
ematicians would have had little luck attempting to gain wider public acceptance, or
students prepared to pay for tuition, by persuading the largely illiterate rural popula-
tion or the labouring poor; neither group needed their skills. Increased involvement in
navigation and exploration contributed to a greater demand for mathematical prac-
tice. Nevertheless, the audience for their texts was restricted, in many respects, to the
literate urban classes of merchants and master craftsmen and to gentlemen.56
Several factors contributed to the expansion of England’s shipping and commer-
cial enterprises. Although in 1560 there was only approximately 50,000 tons of
merchant shipping of every kind, concern with promoting the fisheries and the growth
of the coal trade began the build-up of smaller ships. Moreover, the disruptions in
Antwerp in the 1560s and 1570s curtailed the English traditional dependence upon
European middlemen, and increased the number of English ships in Mediterranean
waters.57 Additionally, the cloth export crisis in the 1550s created a need for new
markets, but there was also a growing interest in searching for spices and gold from
the East. Revisionist accounts that are sceptical about the cloth export crisis as
leading to a search for new cloth markets still emphasize the importance of the
rising new trades based on imports extending from Morocco, Russia, Persia, and
Guinea to Turkey.58 For instance, the company for the discovery of the northeast
passage of 1553, which evolved into the Muscovy Company of 1555, a driving
force in the eastward expansionist movement, aimed to open up a route to the spices
and gold of the Far East that would be free from Portuguese interference.59 The
burgeoning of foreign trade and increasingly longer voyages eventually led to a
demand for mariners who were skilled in navigational instruments and practical
mathematics. It was not, however, a speedy process. Before 1572, Stephen Bor-
ough had made unsuccessful attempts to establish the position of chief pilot as well
as the training of pilots on the Spanish model;60 and Richard Hakluyt had called for
the establishment of a navigational lectureship in London in 1582.61 Sir Thomas
Smith seems to have sponsored lectures in navigation at his own expense, for the
East India Company.62 It was not, however, until 1673 that a government-sponsored
mathematical navigational school was founded at Christ’s Hospital. This school
was originally founded for purposes relating more closely to war than trade, al-
though it appears that in 1631 there was a short-lived stipend given for a math-
ematical lecture on navigation “to his Majesty’s servants”.63 Other factors, however,
besides avoiding occult associations, expanding trade, and exploration, encouraged
the expansion of certain types of mathematical practice.
The perceived need for an education that would allow men to take advantage of
new opportunities, and increase their ability to give service to the state, had been
growing since Henry VIII’s “reform” of the church. A new class was needed to
fulfil the functions of government that had previously been performed by men who
had been drawn mainly from the church.64 Additionally, Henry VIII’s reformation
gave the crown a great deal of church land to manage, which increased the need for
surveying. Mathematics, in this period, began to be included in some educational
texts as a valued gentlemanly recreation and as a practical activity. Although, as we
have seen in Asham’s remarks, overmuch study of mathematics was viewed with
suspicion, and although the danger of being tainted with occult associations per-
sisted in some minds, some knowledge of practical mathematics was becoming
more and more important for gentlemen.65 Sir Thomas Elyot, in his The boke named
the Governour (1531), made it clear that it was a virtue for those who would be
governors to study subjects that would improve the “publike weale”.66 He urged
that gentlemen learn “geometry, astronomie, and cosmographie”, but that they learn
these things with instruments, charts, and figures; otherwise this pursuit would take
up too much time.67 Humphrey Gilbert’s scheme for an academy to educate the
nobility and gentry at Queen Elizabeth’s court also included practical mathematics.
There were to be mathematicians who were to read arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
and cosmography; the instruction, however, was to focus on navigation and war-
fare, with an emphasis on instruments.68 Additionally, Henry Percy, the ninth Earl
of Northumberland, in his Advice to his son (1609), recommended the study of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and “the Art Nautical and Military”.69 Mr Crow’s
tutor explained to his father that he would at least teach him arithmetic, geometry
and the use of globes, and also assist him as much as he was able if the son’s
“Genius delights to wade deeper”.70 Later, Henry Peacham, who tutored William
Howard (who later became Viscount Stafford), also wrote a text on gentlemanly
conduct titled Compleat gentleman (1622).71 He ranked mathematics with poetry,
pictures, and heraldry as a pleasing gentlemanly recreation, and he called math-
ematics “this most ingenious and useful Art ... a science of such Importance, that
without it, we can hardly eate our bread, lie dry in our beds, buy, sell, or use any
commerce whatsoever”.72 It became increasingly contended that if a gentleman

wanted to maintain his position and engage in the activities traditional to his class,
a measure of skill in mathematics was essential.73 Mathematics, however, does not
seem to have been valued for its own sake, but only insofar as it could be portrayed
as serving the commonwealth and private interests.
Moreover, such ventures as the Muscovy Company’s attempts to find a northerly
passage to the Indies and the East India Company’s charter for voyages beyond the
Cape of Good Hope and Magellan’s Straits eventually increased the interest in
mathematics through the company’s structure and the extensive nature of the voy-
ages. The new joint-stock companies were pioneers in the expansion of trade and
they depended upon financial devices that utilized at least basic mathematics.74
Even the slaving voyages required mathematical techniques for redistributing capi-
tal.75 These companies were possible targets of mathematical practitioners in their
quest for patronage. For example, Robert Recorde dedicated the first English alge-
bra, The whetstone of witte, to the Muscovy Company in November 1557, and his
Castle of knowledge (1556), a treatise on the sphere, was written expressly for the
Muscovy Company’s navigators. Increasing trade created a wider audience for the
rhetoric of utility; the tonnage of shipping doubled between 1570 and 1630, and by
the end of this period the English merchants and ships handled a complex network
of trade.76 The rhetoric used to advocate voyages of discovery, new trades and colo-
nies was often phrased in terms of promoting the public good. Indeed, there are
striking similarities between the claims of advocates of overseas expansion and the
claims of the promoters of mathematical practice. Both groups tended to claim that
they were concerned with the public good, or the common weal, and that their
activities would increase trade and lead to work for the unemployed.77
THE RHETORIC OF UTILITY
English mathematical practitioners began their attempts to convince their readers

of the usefulness of mathematics even in the earliest texts written in the vernacular.
Robert Recorde, a student at both Oxford and Cambridge where he studied medi-
cine, was a Controller of the Mint, and acted as a Surveyor of Mines and Moneys in
Ireland. He was also a writer of mathematical textbooks. In his work, The grounde
of artes (1542), an elementary arithmetic, he began with the almost metaphysical
proclamation that “nombre ... is the onely thyng (all moste) that separateth manne
from beastes. He therefore that shall contemne nombre, he declareth hym self as
brutishe as a beaste, and unworthy to be counted in the fellowshyp of menne.”78
After this attack upon those who would disparage numbers, Recorde went on to
invoke the concept of utility, stating that without numbers men could do almost
nothing.79 He provided a long list of activities, including all the contemporary aca-
demic subjects, that depend upon numbers, such as astronomy, geometry, music,
“physicke”, law, grammar, and divinity. This sort of generalized defence that argued
for the value of mathematics to the lawyer, the physician, and even theologians
should, perhaps, be seem as more of a rhetorical trope than as a serious attempt to

colonize the territory of what Recorde labelled the “learned professions”. It was a
standard defence that was used alongside frequent appeals to the support of ac-
knowledged authorities.80 More importantly, he also claimed that numbers are nec-
essary to the “Common Weale in times of peace and in due provision and order of
armies in tyme of battle”.81 By the time he had finished describing numbers’ useful
attributes, his audience might be pardoned for believing that it was their civic duty
to learn arithmetic. Humphrey Baker, in his The well springe of sciences (London,
1562), a basic arithmetic that was dedicated to the Merchant Adventurers’ Com-
pany, went even further, stating that anyone who did not accept the value of arith-
metic was a “foole, and vnfit member, to rule or deale in a Common Welthe”.82 In
the dedication of Recorde’s Pathway of knowledge (1551), an elementary geometry
text, he presented the case for the usefulness of geometry as well, claiming “Car-
penters, karvers, Joyners and masons doo willingly acknowledge that they can worke
nothyng without reason of geometrie”.83 Both branches of mathematics were pro-
claimed to be practical, profitable and vital to the “Common Weales”.
On the other hand, Thomas Digges, in his and his father Leonard’s Stratioticos,
first published in 1579, seems to confirm the fears of those who like Ascham be-
lieved that mathematical practice might lead to isolation, while simultaneously uti-
lizing the rhetoric of utility to rehabilitate its reputation. He stated:
the more subtle parts of these Mathematical Demonstrations did breede in me
for a time a singular delection, yet finding none, or very few, with whome to
conferre & communicate those my delites, (& remembering also that grave
sentence of Diuine Plato, that we are not borne for our selves, but also for our
Parents, Countrie, and Friends).... After I grew to years of riper iudgement, I
haue wholey bent my self to reduce those Imaginatiue contemplations, to sen-
sible Practicall Conclusions: as well thereby to haue some companions of those
my delectible studies, as also to be able, when time is, to employ these to the
seruice of my Prince and Countrie.84
Thus although he had been seduced for a time into Ascham’s stereotype of an iso-
lated “mathematical head”, he claims to have seen the light and transformed him-
self into a useful member of the commonwealth. Moreover, in Digges’s dedication
to his patron, the Earl of Leicester, he emphasizes his many practical services espe-
cially in navigation and military applications.85
Certain sections of the texts, such as the extended titles, epistles “to the reader”,
and dedications to a patron, were commonly used to attract the interests of poten-
tial readers and to portray mathematics as vital to such useful activities as astronomy,
navigation, surveying, gunnery, architecture and mensuration. Aside from the ex-
travagant claims about the usefulness of some of the instruments, there was never a
hint of anything that might be construed as an occult association. In Blundevile’s
Exercises (1594), a comprehensive treatise that covered topics ranging over
arithmetic, trigonometry (at least in terms of using tables), cosmography, the use of
globes, maps, and a discussion of navigation, he makes it clear in his address to the
reader that he hopes to appeal to the English gentlemen, from both court and coun-
try, who were interested in travelling by sea and who would therefore like to learn
enough mathematics to understand the principles of navigation.86 Other practition-
ers, such as Richard Witt, made their intended audience clear by the title of their
work, for example, “Arithmeticall Qvestions, Touching The Buying or Exchange
of Annuities, Taking of Leases for Fines, or yearly Rent; Purchase of Fee-Simples;
Dealing for a Present or Future Possessions; and Other Barggines and Accounts,
wherein Allowance for Disbursing or Forbeareance of Money is Intended ...”. In
Witt’s address to the reader, he makes it very clear that men could not properly
trade with one another, except with great losses, without using mathematics. He
ends this section by commanding his readers to “Perswade thy selfe, Arithmeticke
is profitable, not onely to men in their private affaires, but also in the Common-
wealth bussinesses: as well in time of warre as peace”.87
Extreme cases of the rhetoric of utility were the texts that were so obviously
practical that nothing needed to be said. For instance, in Edward Wright’s The de-
scription and vse of the sphaere (London, 1613) there was no dedication, preface,
or introductory remarks whatsoever. The work begins with a table of contents that
makes it clear that the text consists of a detailed, technical account of the uses of
the sphere. Only one picture of the instrument is included. The work begins with a
description of the sphere and globe, and goes on to explain the use of various as-
pects such as the zodiac, the meridian, and the tropics. It then explicates procedures
such as “To rectife the sphere; that is, to sett the sphaere to the latitude of the place
for which you would use it”. This text was recommended by Captain John Smith
for the use of mariners,88 and perhaps Wright felt that the usefulness of the sphere
was too obvious to need labouring. Edmund Gunter’s Use of the sector, crosse-
staffe, and other instruments (London, 1624) also dispenses with these typical de-
vices. Instead, it jumps directly into details, and seems aimed more towards fellow
professionals, being dedicated in the title to “such as are studious of Mathematicall
practise”, than a general audience. It might have been intended more to familiarize
other mathematical practitioners with these instruments so they could, in turn, ex-
plain them to their students. Perhaps, once again, the instruments’ utility is sup-
posed to speak for itself.
UTILITY EMBEDDED IN MATHEMATICAL PRACTICE
The problems themselves were often constructed in what we might now consider a
“story problem” fashion in order to present mathematics as useful in everyday prac-
tices. John Tapp, in his The path-way to knowledge (1633), used a variety of differ-
ent occupations such as merchants and noblemen’s stewards when giving examples
of addition. Although the examples are somewhat contrived, they show a desire to
display mathematics in action. A merchant, for instance, has received several
payments from a debtor, and wishes to know the total sum. The steward wishes to
know the total he has spent on household expenses.89 Questions concerning money
were very popular: “In 345 pounds, how many pence?”90 Even more advanced ques-
tions, such as the extraction of roots, were put into what was supposed to be a
practical setting and given “real-life” characters who could benefit from mathemati-
cal knowledge. Tapp wrote:
A Captain over an Army of men, being to attempt the winning of a Cittie: So it
is that by reason of a ditch which compasseth the walles thereof, hee cannot
come neere the walles to place Ladders there....91
The problem, which is to find the proper height of the ladder, involves taking a
square root, and is solved by using a geometrical instrument. In some instances, not
only is a ‘real-life’ problem provided, but also a picture of a person solving it
instrumentally is included. Even without pictures of instruments, however, the more
difficult procedures, such as the taking of square roots, were usually linked to prac-
tical activities. In Blundeville’s Exercises (1594), after he describes his methods
for taking square roots, he immediately shows how this technique may be used in
the “setting of battels”. This is characterized as being an Italian procedure, usable
by a “Sargent major” in the field, for the arranging of his armies. It was supposed to
inform one of how many ranks, and how many men per rank, were needed in order
to form popular battle formations. Although it is difficult to envisage soldiers paus-
ing before the beginning of a battle to compute square roots, these examples pro-
vided at least a practical façade. The intention seems to be to provide illustrations,
whether they were feasible or not, of mathematics in practice that could be utilized
in a variety of situations.
The questions of exactly how useful practical mathematics was, and who actu-
ally read these texts, are both difficult to answer. We should be extremely careful
about accepting at face value practitioners’ claims concerning mathematics’ utility
and ties to craft practices. Some of the more basic arithmetic and geometric opera-
tions taught in the more elementary texts were both undoubtedly useful and some-
thing one could learn by oneself through careful reading. Addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division could all be useful in keeping household accounts, per-
forming monetary conversions, and dividing up profits. Skill at measuring, weigh-
ing and finding of distances could similarly be used for many practical applications.
There are signs, however, that the practitioners themselves were not convinced that
all students could easily acquire these various techniques by reading texts. Worsop,
in his work on surveying, claimed to be a simple man writing for the common
people, hinting that texts by such learned scholars as Recorde and Digges would be
too difficult.92. William Bourne, in his The treasure for traveilers (1578), also claimed
to be an “unlearned” author, writing for the common people. Practitioners seemed
to make distinctions concerning the difficulty level of various texts; although to a
certain extent this might have been a strategy to promote their texts at other au-
thors’ expense, some texts were clearly simpler than others.
For instance, Recorde’s The whetstone of witte (1557), unlike his other works,
F IG. 1. The “Mathematical Iewel”, from the title-page of John Blagrave’s book of that name
(London, 1585).
was never reprinted. Here, besides using “practical” examples, Recorde claims that
the extraction of roots “serueth so many waies, in building: in proieaion of plattes,
for measuring of ground Timber, or stone: And also in warre, for framyng of battailes,
for makying of diuerse engines, and generally for all woorkes of Geometrie and
Astronomie”.93 There are, however, two problems with his claim. First, it would
have taken an exceptional student, in the days when multiplication and division
were viewed as complex operations, to have mastered the art of taking square roots
from his explanation alone, without further aid from a teacher. The explanation of
the process given is purely by rote, in a recipe-like fashion, with no hint of the
underlying reasoning behind it. One could very quickly run into situations where it
would have been unclear just how one should proceed. Second, as already remarked,
it seems highly unlikely that battle captains actually paused before engagements to
compute square roots to form their battalions. In the section dealing with “cossike”
numbers, Recorde introduced algebraic equations that were supposed to be an-
swering questions concerning bricks, silk, walls, and wills among other things; yet
the fact that no other text devoted mainly to algebra was written for another sev-
enty-four years makes it unlikely that he convinced his audience of the utility of
these techniques.
William London’s A catalogue of the most vendible books in England (1657),
gives us some idea of the variety of the mathematical texts sold, if not of who was
purchasing them. The section discussing mathematics, however, is grouped together
with “Horsemanship, Faulconry, Merchandize, Limning, Millitary Discipline,
Herauldry, Fire-works, Husbandry, &”, making it seem that he was trying to appeal
to a reasonably well-off audience. The gentry, and the better-off merchants, might
have purchased “practical” texts for their amusement, even though they were said
to be aimed at a more “vulgar” audience. Indeed, some of the instruments described,
such as John Blagrave’s “Mathematical Iewel” (Figure 1), would have been beyond
most people’s means. Interestingly, the list also indicates by its inclusion of magi-
cal and astrological texts that mathematics could be construed to have occult asso-
ciations as late as 1657.
Not only the choice of problem, but often the instruments themselves, were used
as tools of persuasion. Many texts were dedicated to explicating the making and
use of a particular instrument, and they often contain drawings of the instruments
in action (Figure 2). Fabulous claims, about what the instrument could accomplish
if only it were purchased, served not only to sell the instrument in question but also
to convey the extraordinary usefulness of mathematical practice. For instance, in
1585 Blagrave in his The mathematical iewel claimed that his own instrument could
serve in place of a quadrant, ring, “dyall”, astrolabe, sphere, globe “or any such like
heretofore deuise”, and that it was a direct pathway to knowledge in “the whole
Artes of Astronomy, Cosmography, Geography, Topography, Navigation, Longitudes
of Regions, Dyalling, ... with great and incredible speede, plainenesse, facillitie,
and pleasure”.94 In a way, these instruments can be viewed as embodied forms of
persuasion. They were physical items, which could be placed in a client’s hands
and whose practical uses could be easily depicted. In some cases, however, such as
with Blagrave’s “iewel”, it is unclear how easy to use and how practical such a
complicated instrument could actually be. Additionally, instruments could be used
as persuasive devices in that they can also be clearly meant as a display of wealth
and power. For example, part of Richard Delamain’s success in obtaining the pa-
tronage of Charles I seems to have been related to his willingness to devise large,
silver instruments that could be used as a form of princely display.95 Although they
served many other purposes, instruments also provided a method for allowing the
practitioners’ clients and patrons to embrace the outward form of mathematical
practice without the need to delve into theoretical considerations. As Stephen
Johnston has shown, instruments were, in many ways, as important as texts in shaping
F IG. 2. An example of an instrument in action, from John Babington’s A short treatise of geometrie
(London, 1635), 54.
an image of mathematical practice as practical, profitable and pleasurable.96 The

danger of utilizing instruments in this fashion is, as Zetterburg has pointed out, that
the descriptions of the instruments’ usefulness might be so exaggerated as to make
the instrument in question seem magical.
BUILDING ALLIANCES
Another tactic used to persuade people that mathematics was useful, and to help
disassociate it from occult practices, was to emphasize its links with a particularly
popular and profitable activity. Robert Recorde included references to exploration
and navigation in his Castle of knowledge (1556), a work on the sphere in dialogue
form that discussed astronomical instruments in general, introducing into his dia-
logues “Calicutt, Peru, and the Cape of Good Hope”, along with other newly-found
lands, to illustrate the various positions of the Earth with respect to the Sun.97 Fur-
thermore, in his 1557 Whetstone of witte, the first vernacular English algebra text,
which was dedicated to the Muscovy Company, he pledged to write a book that
would concentrate on the problems of northerly navigation. Indeed, he even prom-
ised to show them a way to “Northe Easte Indies”, a region more accessible than
“southernly Cathay”.98 Thomas Digges claimed to find by “Demonstrations Math-
ematical ... the great imperfections in the Arte of Navigation, & grosse Errours
practicised by the masters and Mariners of this our age”.99 He attempted to create
an expert role, and to supply advice for the reformation of mariners’ charts, instru-
ments, and rules.100 Likewise, John Tapp (fl. 1596–1631), whose mathematical prob-
lems were described above, transformed himself from a member of the Draper’s
Company into a teacher of navigation, joined the Stationer’s Company, and began
to publish nautical books and mathematical works that would appeal to mariners
and other practical men.101 Tapp began by dedicating his Path-way to knowledge
(1613) to “Sir Thomas Smith, Knight, Gouernor of the Company of Marchants of
London Trading the East-Indies and the Moscouie Company, as also the Company
of Discouerers for the North-West passage, and treasure for the plantation in Vir-
ginia”, making it clear that he was also trying to attract an audience that was inter-
ested in navigation. Smith was one of the greatest promoters of overseas enterprises,
and he was one of the prime undertakers for the discovery of the North-West pas-
sage.102 Tapp appealed to this audience to learn mathematics because it “is the chief
and most effectuall branch” for the “nourishment” of navigation. Additionally, he
praised his patron for providing ships, mariners, settled trade and new discoveries
“to the great benefit of many thousands imployed therein, a continvall profitte to
the common-wealth, and a lasting glory to our Nation”.103 The persuasive tech-
nique is to emphasize mathematics’ close association with navigation, an activity
that was associated with a similar rhetoric of practicality, profitability, and service
to the commonwealth.
Indeed, exploration and navigation are both areas that in this period saw a greatly
expanded amount of mathematical endeavour. As mentioned earlier, David Waters’s
important book, The art of navigation in England in Elizabethan and early Stuart
times, provides a detailed account of the scope of these mathematical pursuits.104
E. G. R. Taylor, in an equally foundational work, also explores the increasing in-
volvement of mathematicians in these spheres of activity.105 These are both seminal
works and much of their material still stands securely, but they share an implicit
judgement that the triumph of mathematical navigation was inevitable. In this period,
it was not yet completely clear what mixture of techniques would be the most effec-
tive, or who would win the authority to provide expert advice. It was not that anyone
seriously argued that navigation could completely do without mathematics; it was
more a question of the usefulness of mathematics when it was not coupled to practi-
cal sailing skills, and a struggle over who had the proper qualifications to provide
expert advice. The rhetoric of utility was only one method used to help convince the
mathematical practitioners’ audience that their services were necessary.
Practitioners were called upon to persuade not only the mariners, but also their
patrons, of the viability of their techniques. Yet even if the promoters of a voyage
were convinced, it did not necessarily mean that the practitioner’s advice would be
heeded by the mariners or that their techniques, when they were adopted, would
work. In the north-west passage voyages undertaken by Captains Luke Foxe and
Thomas James in 1631, although James heeded the practitioners’ advice, Foxe did
not. Instead, Foxe argued that mathematical theory is useless without experience at
sea.106 Although Foxe’s backers were willing to supply him with the latest new
books and instruments, he refused them. He felt it would be too late, if there was an
emergency at sea, for him to read about the proper course of action. It does not
seem, however, that Foxe was unwilling to take advice; he studied with John Tapp
and Thomas Sterne, as well as learning from Henry Briggs. Nevertheless, he claimed
he would be too busy sailing to bother with books. Yet his voyage was a great
success. James, on the other hand, although he had carefully taken expert advice,
seeking out journals, maps, discourses, and setting skilled workmen to making him
instruments, had in many respects a disastrous voyage.107 His ship took on water,
and there was a series of accidents. In the end, only James, the Master and the
Surgeon were in sound health after wintering in what we would now refer to as
James’ Bay. Besides the Gunner, the Master Warden, the Carpenter, and the Quarter-
Master all died. To add to his difficulties, some of his instruments, such as his
clocks, turned out not to work in the harsh climate of the north.108 As James put it,
“As for our clock and watch, notwithstanding we still kept them by the fireside, in
a chest, wrapped in cloths, yet they were so frozen they could not go”. James’s
voyage was a terrorizing one, full of ice, fogs, and storms. Sadly, for all of his
troubles, James’s voyage, unlike Foxe’s, made no great discoveries.109
As these north-west passage voyages show, accepting practitioners’ advice did
not necessarily lead to a successful journey. In this period, it was not completely
clear what techniques would be the most effective. Some master mariners, like
William Borough, were advocating creating their own experts who combined
practical sailing skills with mathematical theory.110 Even what seem to us to be
great successes, such as Edward Wright’s Certaine errors in navigation (1599),
display great concern over whether their work will be accepted by mariners. Wright
worried that seafaring men were satisfied with their current methods or that they
would “condemne Vniversities and all in comparison of their manifold experi-
ments”.111 Claiming his work would have found favour if it had been written by a
“master of the sea”, he believed it would be less popular because a mathematician
wrote it.112 Moreover, as we have seen, captains such as Foxe were still successfully
completing their voyages without, like James, bringing with them books contain-
ing expert advice and all the latest instruments.113 It seems reasonably clear that the
seamen were not meekly guided towards improved navigation by mathematical
practitioners.114 Persuasive techniques, such as the rhetoric of utility, were an im-
portant aspect of overcoming resistance to the reform of navigational practice, but
it was a negotiated process whose outcome was uncertain.115 It was not until 1673,
when The Royal Mathematical School was founded, that mathematical navigation
became established officially as a necessary component of some mariners’ educa-
tion.
CONCLUSION
As we have seen, from at least 1550–1650 mathematics was linked to magic in the
public’s mind, and it had a dubious reputation. Gradually, throughout this period,
the rhetoric of utility helped to reshape mathematics’ associations to profitability
and pleasure. It is doubtful, however, that the rhetoric of utility alone, or even the
actual usefulness of mathematics itself, could have been so successful at this
refashioning if opinions concerning natural magic had not also been undergoing re-
alignment. Recent research in the history of magic has emphasized the difference
between so-called natural magic on the one hand and symbolic magic and demon-
ology on the other.116 While natural magic, which was based on the assumption that
all bodies had various natural powers enabling them to affect various other bodies
(namely those that “corresponded” to them in the “great Chain of Being”), was
largely combined with traditional natural philosophy to give rise to something
recognizably closer to modern science, symbolic magic and demonology were
increasingly rejected as beyond the pale. During this transformation of natural magic
not all parts of the tradition proved equally useful to the new philosophers. The
more pragmatic parts of alchemy were preserved at the expense of the more mysti-
cal side, giving rise to something we might accept as chemistry, while astrology
was increasingly perceived to be implausible and was rejected.
Unfortunately, the exact reasons why some portions of the magical tradition were
absorbed into natural philosophy while others were rejected have yet to be totally
ascertained. As we have already noted, magic had a dubious public image, and, as
John Henry points out, it “made sense for reforming natural philosophers to add
their own voices to the denunciation of magic, while they extracted what they rec-
ognized to be useful out of the tradition”.117 We should keep in mind, however, that
this was an uneven, complex process. In the second half of the seventeenth century
natural philosophers such as Boyle and Newton were still drawing upon the older
natural magic traditions. It is perhaps worth adding that the rhetoric of utility itself
owed something to the older natural magical tradition. Magic was always used for
practical benefit and the rhetorical emphasis on utility by propagandists for the
reform of natural philosophy can be seen simply as yet another appropriation from
magic.118 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that mathematicians, previously seen as

working within the occultist tradition, should have at their fingertips a repertoire of
arguments for the usefulness of their art.
Thus practitioners were aided in their quest to associate mathematics with useful
activities instead of occult practices by the overall shift in perception concerning
what was meant by magic. Many of the negative connotations could be pushed
entirely over to astrology, which was eventually rejected by both mathematics and
the new philosophy. The refashioning of the image of mathematics, and its disso-
ciation from astrology, however, was also a complicated, long-drawn-out process.
A 1657 list of “vendible”, or best-selling, books includes astrological and magical
texts in with the “Books Mathematicall”.119 The push, on the other hand, in the
1640s and 1650s, to add practical mathematics to various curricula by certain fac-
tions in the education reform movements, shows that mathematics was accepted by
many as a profitable, pleasurable activity.120 Considering how few English math-
ematical practitioners were active in 1550, and the doubtful reputation of math-
ematics in the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
century, versus both the greater number of practitioners and the improved image of
mathematical practice by 1650, it seems that the frequent emphasis on utility was
indeed a persuasive defence against charges of dangerous occultism.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful for comments on earlier drafts of this paper by John Henry,
Frances Willmoth, and the anonymous referees. I would particularly like to thank
John Henry; his encouragement and advice were vital to the rewriting of my paper.
Any faults that remain are, of course, my own.
REFERENCES
1. Philip Davis and Reubin Hersh, “Rhetoric and mathematics”, in J. S. Nelson, A. Megill and D. N.
McCloskey (eds), The rhetoric of the human sciences: Language and argument in scholarship
and public affairs (Madison, 1987), 53–68.
2. Robert S. Westman, “The astronomer’s role in the sixteenth century: A preliminary study”, History
of science, xviii (1980), 105–47; Mario Biagioli, “The social status of Italian mathematicians,
1450–1600”, History of science, xxvii (1989), 41–95; J. A. Bennett, “The challenge of practical
mathematics”, in Stephen Pumfrey, Paolo L. Rossi, and Maurice Slawinski (eds), Science,
culture and popular belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester, 1991), 176–90; idem, “The
mechanics’ philosophy and the mechanical philosophy”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 1–
28; Peter Dear, Discipline and experience: The mathematical way in the Scientific Revolution
(Chicago and London, 1995); Alan Gabbey, “The case of mechanics: One revolution or many?”,
in David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution
(Cambridge, 1990), 493–528; idem, “Between ars and philosophia naturalis: Reflections on
the historiography of early modern mechanics”, in J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (eds),
Renaissance and revolution (Cambridge, 1993), 133–46; Nicholas Jardine, The birth of history
and philosophy of science: Kepler’s “A defence of Tycho against Ursus” with essays on its
provenance and significance (Cambridge, 1984); idem, “Epistemology of the sciences”, in

Charles B. Schmitt et al. (eds), The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy (Cambridge,
1988), 685–711; Stephen Johnston, “Mathematical practitioners and instruments in Elizabethan
England”, Annals of science, xlviii (1991), 319–44; idem, “The identity of the mathematical
practitioner in 16th-century England”, in Irmgard Hantsche (ed.), Der ‘mathematicus’: Zur
Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer neuen Berufsgruppe in der Zeit Gerhard Mercators (Bochum,
1996), 93–120; Frances Willmoth, Sir Jonas Moore: Practical mathematics and Restoration
science (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1993); W. R. Laird, “Patronage of mechanics and theories of
impact in sixteenth century Italy”, in Bruce Moran (ed.), Patronage and institutions: Science,
technology and medicine at the European court, 1500–1750 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991),
51–66.
3. Johnston, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1991), focuses on how mathematical practitioners used instruments as
another tool to “negotiate the character and status of the mathematicalls”.
4. Johnston, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1996), provides an important summary of diversity of mathematical
practice.
5. E. G. R. Taylor, The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (3rd edn, Cambridge,
1968). See also David Waters, The art of navigation in England in Elizabethan and early
Stuart times (London, 1958).
6. Bennett, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1991), and op. cit. (ref. 2, 1986), 11.
7. Johnston, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1991).
8. Ivor Grattan-Guinness (ed.), Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the
mathematical sciences (2 vols, London and New York, 1994).
9. John Henry, “Magic and science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, in R. C. Olby, G. N.
Cantor, J. R. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge (eds), Companion to the history of modern
science (London and New York, 1990).
10. Peter Zetterberg, “The mistaking of ‘the mathematicks’ for magic in Tudor and Stuart England”,
Sixteenth century journal, xi (1980), 83–97, p. 83; see also William Eamon, “Technology as
magic in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance”, Janus, lxx (1983), 171–212, and Frances
A. Yates, “The Hermetic tradition in Renaissance science”, in Charles S. Singleton (ed.), Ideas
and ideals in the North European Renaissance: Collected essays (3 vols, Baltimore, 1967), iii,
227–46, p. 230.
11. Eamon, “Technology as magic” (ref. 10). See also A. George Molland, “Cornelius Agrippa’s
mathematical magic”, in Cynthia Hay (ed.), Mathematics from manuscript to print 1300–
1600 (Oxford, 1988), 209–19.
12. Mordechai Feingold, “The occult tradition in the English universities of the Renaissance: A
reassessment”, in Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance
(Cambridge, 1984), 73–91, p. 79.
13. For Dee, see William H. Sherman, John Dee: The politics of reading and writing in the English
Renaissance (Amherst, 1995); Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s natural philosophy: Between
science and religion (London, 1988); idem, “At the crossroads of magic and science: John
Dee’s Archemastrie”, in Vickers (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 12), 57–71; James Crossley (ed.), The
autobiographical tracts of Dr. John Dee (Manchester, 1851).
14. No exhaustive study of the literature is intended. As examples I have selected the prefaces and
popular works of the mathematicians such as Robert Recorde, Edmund Wingate, John Tapp,
Thomas Blundeville, Richard Witt, and sundry non-mathematical works where mathematics
is discussed.
15. Zetterberg, op. cit. (ref. 10); Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic (New York, 1971),
362–3.
16. John Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives’, chiefly of contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the
years 1669 and 1696, ed. by Andrew Clark (2 vols, Oxford, 1898), i, 27.
17. Allen left his watch in a chamber of his room when he was visiting Mr John Scudamore in
Herefordshire. The maid, when she heard it ticking, concluded it was the devil and threw it
into the moat. The watch, however, was attached to a string, and was caught on a branch,
confirming its association with the devil.
18. The famous story alleges that when Dee left Mortlake privately in 1583 to embark for Holland, a
mob, believing him to be a magician, broke into his house and destroyed a great part of his
furniture and books, and also his mathematical instruments, has been conclusively demolished.
See the article on Dee in DNB, xiv, 275 for the original story, and Julian Roberts and Andrew
G. Watson (eds), John Dee’s library catalogue (London, 1990), for a refutation.
19. Aubrey, op. cit. (ref. 16), 109, 213.
20. As quoted in Zetterberg, op. cit. (ref. 10), 85.
21. Aubrey, op. cit. (ref. 16), 108, 153.
22. Edward Worsop, A discoverie of sundrie errours and faults daily committed by landemeaters
(London, 1582), sig. Fr, sig. E3l.
23. Worsop, op. cit. (ref. 22), sig. F2r.
24. Francis Osborne, Advise to a son (Oxford, 1656), 7–8.
25. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Various collections (Westminster, 1909), v, 246, as quoted
in Feingold, “The occult tradition” (ref. 12), 79.
26. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia II.1 (Opera, i, 53); see also Molland, op. cit.
(ref. 11).
27. Yates, “The Hermetic tradition” (ref. 10), 230.
28. Feingold, “The occult tradition” (ref. 12), 81.
29. Quoted in Eamon, “Technology as magic” (ref. 11), 201.
30. William Eamon, Science and the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern
culture (Princeton, N.J., 1994), 39–44.
31. Yates, op. cit. (ref. 10), 230.
32. Molland, op. cit. (ref. 11), 210.
33. Richard Dunn, “The true place of astrology among the mathematical arts of late Tudor England”,
Annals of science, li (1994), 151–63.
34. Thomas, op. cit. (ref. 15), 358–68.
35. Eamon, “Technology as magic” (ref. 11), 201; see also Paul Rose, Italian renaissance of
mathematics (Droz, 1975), chap. 1.
36. Thomas, op. cit. (ref. 34), 363.
37. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 47–49.
38. Thomas, op. cit. (ref. 15), 363.
39. Roger Ascham, The scholemaster, ed. by John E. B. Mayor (London, 1863; rpr. New York, 1967),
14–15. Ascham’s text was printed in 1570, with two more editions in 1571, one edition in
1573, and one edition in 1589.
40. For Ascham’s career as a mathematical lecturer, see P. L. Rose, “Erasmians and mathematics at
Cambridge in the early sixteenth century”, Sixteenth century journal, viii, supplement (1977),
47–59, p. 56. Ascham also advised against studying mathematics too intensely in a 1564 letter
to the Earl of Leicester, stating “I think you did yourself injury in changing Tully’s wisdom
with Euclid’s pricks and lines” (in J. A. Giles (ed.), The whole works of Roger Ascham (3 vols,
London, 1864–65), ii, 103).
41. Stephen Shapin, A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England
(Chicago, 1994); Peter Dear, “Totius in verba: Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal
Society”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 145–61. See also Marello Pera and William Shea (eds), Persuading
science (Canton, Mass., 1991) and Peter Dear (ed.) The literary structure of scientific argument:
Historical studies (Philadelphia, 1991).
42. See Frederic L. Holmes, “Argument and narrative in scientific writing”, in Pera and Shea (eds),
Persuading science (ref. 41), 164–94, for an exploration of the method of obtaining consensus
used by the Academicians.
43. Shapin, op. cit. (ref. 41), 337. See also Shapin, “Robert Boyle and mathematics: Reality,
representation, and experimental practice”, Science in context, ii (1988), 23–58.
44. Dear, “Totius in verba” (ref. 41), 159.
45. Geoffrey Cantor, “The rhetoric of experiment”, in David Gooding, Trevor Pinch and Simon Schaffer
(eds), The uses of experiment: Studies in the natural sciences (Cambridge, 1989), 159–80.
Cantor discusses the rhetoric of experimental reports. See also Michael Hunter’s Science and
society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), especially chap. 5, for a discussion of the
role of utility in Restoration science.
46. Philip Kitcher, “Persuasion”, in Pera and Shea (eds), Persuading science (ref. 41), 3–27.
47. Johnston, op. cit. (ref. 4), 108.
48. Shapin, A social history of truth (ref. 41), 222, 236.
49. Taylor, op. cit. (ref. 5), 205.
50. Edmund Wingate, Arithmetique made easie, in tvvo bookes (London, 1630), sig. Ar.
51. Ibid.
52. John Tapp, The path-way to knovvledge; Containing the whole art of arithmeticke ... (London,
1613).
53. Taylor, op. cit. (ref. 5), 173. Waters, op. cit. (ref. 5), 569.
54. M. Blundevile, M Blundevile His exercises, containing sixe treatises ... (London, 1594), sig. A3r;
Worsop, A discoverie of sundrie errours ... (London, 1582), sig. A2r–A2l.
55. Fernand Braudel, The wheels of commerce: Civilization and capitalism 15th–18th century, transl.
by Siân Reynolds (2 vols, New York, 1986), ii, 448.
56. For more details on the problems of audience, see Johnston, “Mathematical practitioners” (ref.
3), 342.
57. Ralph Davis, The rise of the english shipping industry in the 17th and 18th centuries (2nd edn,
Newton Abbot, 1972); R. Brenner, “The social basis of English commercial expansion 1550–
1650”, Journal of economic history, xxxii (1972), 361–441.
58. Robert Brenner, Merchants and revolution: Commercial change, political conflict, and London’s
overseas traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), 5.
59. Brenner, op. cit. (ref. 58), 12–14.
60. Taylor, op. cit. (ref. 5), 33, 171.
61. Waters, op. cit. (ref. 5), 542–3.
62. Waters, op. cit. (ref. 5), 558.
63. Davis, op. cit. (ref. 57), 125.
64. Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the art of discourse (Cambridge, 1974), 69–71.
65. See A. J. Turner’s “Mathematical instruments and the education of gentlemen”, Annals of science,
xxx (1973), 51–88 for a detailed explanation of why these skills became necessary.
66. Sir Thomas Elyot, The boke named the Governour (ed. from 1st edn of 1531 by Henry Herbert
Stephen Croft; 2 vols, New York, 1968, reprint of 1883 edn), 28.
67. Elyot, op. cit. (ref. 66), 45–46.
68. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, “Queene Elizabethes Academy”, in F. J. Funivell (ed.), Queene Elizabethes
Academy (by Sir Humphrey Gilbert). A booke of precedence, The ordering of a funerall, &c.
Varying versions of the good wife, The wise man, &c. Maxims, Lydgate’s order of fools, A
poem on heraldry, Occleve on Lords’ men &c (London, 1969), 4–5.
69. Henry Percy, Advice to his son, ed. by G. B. Harrison (London, 1930), 67–72.
70. British Library, Add MS 27,606 (The design and method of Mr Crow’s studies).
71. Henry Peacham, The compleat gentleman (London, 1622).
72. Peacham, op. cit. (ref. 71), 72.
73. Turner, “Mathematical instruments” (ref. 65), 51.
74. T. S. Willan, The Muscovy merchants of 1555 (Manchester, 1953), 5–10.
75. Willan, op. cit. (ref. 74), 7.
76. Kenneth Andrews, Trade, plunder and settlement: Maritime enterprise and the genesis of the
British Empire 1480–1630 (Cambridge, 1984), 8.
77. Andrews, op. cit. (ref. 76), 33, for an excellent review of the rhetoric used by the literature
advocating voyages of discovery, new trades, and the colonies.
78. Robert Recorde, The grounde of artes (London, 1542), sig. Aivr.
79. Recorde, Grounde (ref. 78), sig. Biiir.
80. See Johnston, op. cit. (ref. 2, 1996), 112 , on this point.
81. Recorde, Grounde (ref. 78), sig. Biiir.
82. Humphrey Baker, The well springe of sciences (London, 1562), sig. Aiiiil.
83. Robert Recorde, Pathway of knowledge (London, 1551), Preface sig. i.
84. Thomas Digges, Stratioticos (London, 1579), sig. Aiijr.
85. Stephen Johnston, “Making mathematical practice: Gentlemen, practitioners and artisans in
Elizabethan England”, Ph.D.dissertation, Cambridge University, 1994, provides a lucid
explanation of the connections between Digges’s shift in orientation and a highly nuanced
conception of patronage as social credit. By contrast, see also Mordechai Feingold, The
mathematicians’ apprenticeship: Science, universities and society in England 1560–1640
(Cambridge, 1984), 186, and cf. 206–7.
86. Blundevile, His exercises (ref. 54), sig. A4l.
87. Richard Witt, Arithmeticall qvestions ... (London, 1613), sig. A3r.
88. Taylor, op. cit. (ref. 5), 337.
89. John Tapp, The path-way to knowledge (London, 1613), 10–11.
90. Tapp, op. cit. (ref. 89), 49.
91. Tapp, op. cit. (ref. 89), 305–6.
92. Edward Worsop, A discoverie of sundrie errours (London, 1582), sig. A2l–r.
93. Robert Recorde, Whetstone of witte (London, 1557), sig. Miir.
94. John Blagrave, The mathematical iewel (London, 1585), title-page.
95. See Katherine Hill, “‘Juglers or Schollers’: Negotiating the role of a mathematical practitioner”,
The British journal for the history of science, in press.
96. Johnston, “Mathematical practitioners” (ref. 3).
97. John Parker, Books to build an empire: Bibliographical history of English overseas interest to
1620 (Amsterdam, 1965), 55–56.
98. Recorde, Whetstone of witte (ref. 93), fol. Aiii. See also Willan, The Muscovy merchants of 1555
(ref. 74), 23; E. G. R. Taylor, The haven-finding art: A history of navigation from Odysseus to
Captain Cook (London, 1957), 197; Waters, op. cit. (ref. 5), 94–95.
99. Leonard and Thomas Digges, Stratioticos (London, 1579), sig. Aiii3.
100. As we shall see, however, his attempts were not always greeted with open arms; Digges complained
that “In like sort by Masters, Pilotes, and Mariners, I have bene aunswered, that my
Demonstrations were pretie devises: but if I had bene in any Sea services, I should finde all
these my Inventions meere toyes, and their Rules onely practizeable...”, op. cit. (ref. 99), sig.
Aivr.
101. Taylor, op. cit. (ref. 5), 193.
102. Andrews, op. cit. (ref. 76), 20.
103. Tapp, op. cit. (ref. 89), sig. A2l.
104. Waters, op. cit. (ref. 5).
105. Taylor, The haven-finding art (ref. 98).
106. See Luke Foxe, North-West Fox, or, Fox from the North-West Passage (London, 1635).
107. Thomas James, The strange and dangerous voyage of Captain Thomas James (London, 1633),
sig. A2v.
108. Thomas Rundall (ed.), Narratives of voyages towards the north-west in search of a passage to
Cathay and India 1496 to 1631 (London, 1869), 205.
109. Foxe not only managed not to lose a man, but also to sail much further north, and was at least able
to discount earlier suggestions as to the possible location of the passage.
110. William Borough, A discourse of the variation of the cumpas (London, 1581). He suggests that
all seamen who wished to excel at their profession should learn arithmetic and geometry, but
he urged this course so that they could design their own instruments and not depend upon
outside advice.
111. Edward Wright, Certaine errors in navigation; The voyage of ... to the Azores (London, 1599),
sig. ||3r.
112. Wright, op. cit. (ref. 111), sig. ||3r–l.
113. James does not mention very precisely which books he brought with him, stating merely “A
Chest full of the best and choicest Mathematicall bookes that could be got for money in England;
as likewise Master Hackkluite and Master Purchas, and other books of Iournals and Histories”.
He did, however, supply a list of instruments, including “glasses, logg-line, meridian-line,
plumb-lines, globes, semi-circles, meridian compasses, loade-stone, watch-clocke, a Table,
euery day Calculated, correspondent to the Latitude, Master Gunter’s Cross-staff, Jacobs Staues,
Quadrant, Equilateral Triangle ... “ (pp. 604–6). Foxe, on the other hand, seems to have brought
very few instruments. He mentions a compass, which he said was unreliable (p. 309), a log-
line, and a semi-circle.
114. William Barlow, The navigators svpply (London, 1597) is another example of suggestions offered
combined with concern over acceptance by sailors. He relates a story about one of Sir Francis
Drake’s voyages to show what happens to those who fail to listen to their experts; Drake ended
up sailing in a circle, arriving back where he began after 16 days, because he would not listen
to his navigator who was aware of the difficulties that ensued due to the variation of the compass
(sig. a3l). Moreover, he realized that some would suggest that his lack of experience made him
an unfit guide, but he claimed “And in the minde onely, pure and true Arte, refined from the
droße of sensible or experimental knowledge, is to be found” (sig. a5r–br ). In the end, he
assumed that the more skilful sailors would accept his suggestions.
115. Some types of mathematical practice, such as astrology, used different sorts of persuasive devices.
For instance, Christopher Heydon’s A defence of judicial astrology (Cambridge, 1603), written
in response to John Chamber’s A treatise against judicial astrology (London, 1601), where the
main argument seemed to be that astronomy was the highest form of human knowledge in that
the “ravishing beautie, constant order, and powerfull efficacy of the celestiall bodyes ... lead
us to God” (sig. &3r). Additionally, he claimed that astrology and astronomy were in fact the
same thing (sig. A1r), and also maintained that he was only defending ‘proper’ astrologers
who “contain themselves within the bounds of naturall Philosophie”.
116. Stuart Clark, “The rational witchfinder: Conscience, demonological naturalism and popular
superstitions”, in Pumfrey, Rossi and Slawinski (eds), op. cit. (ref. 2), 222–48; idem, “The
scientific status of demonology”, in Vickers (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 12), 351–74; and John Henry,
“‘The touch of cold philosophy? ...’: The fragmentation of Renaissance occultism and the
origin of the Enlightenment”, unpublished manuscript. I thank John Henry for letting me read
this work.
117. John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the origin of modern science (London, 1997), 47.
118. Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From magic to science (Chicago, 1968); and Henry, opera cit. (refs
9 and 117).
119. William London, A catalogue of the most vendible books in England, sig. Dd2r–Dd3l.
120. Katherine Hill, “Mathematics as a tool for social change: Educational reform in seventeenth-
century England”, The seventeenth century, xii (1997), 23–36.

Neal Rhetoric

Încărcat de

Informații document

Descriere originală:

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Neal Rhetoric

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Hist. Sci.

THE RHETORIC OF UTILITY: AVOIDING OCCULT

Recent work by R. S. Westman, Mario Biagioli, J. A. Bennett, Peter Dear, Alan

0073-2753/99/3702-0151/$2.50 © 1999 Science History Publications Ltd

seventeenth are acknowledged, no corrective persuasive strategies were recognized

The utilization of a persuasive technique for supporting the value of mathematical

Similarly, the association between magic and mathematics can be seen in A

MATHEMATICS AND MAGIC

FORMULATING PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES

Mathematical practitioners became proponents of a language of ease and accessi-

THE ENGLISH CONTEXT

commerce whatsoever”.72 It became increasingly contended that if a gentleman

THE RHETORIC OF UTILITY

English mathematical practitioners began their attempts to convince their readers

should, perhaps, be seem as more of a rhetorical trope than as a serious attempt to

UTILITY EMBEDDED IN MATHEMATICAL PRACTICE

an image of mathematical practice as practical, profitable and pleasurable.96 The

magic.118 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that mathematicians, previously seen as

provenance and significance (Cambridge, 1984); idem, “Epistemology of the sciences”, in

S-ar putea să vă placă și