Was late-medieval French education recalcitrant to math?
score:6
Medieval scholarship was essentially a "great books" endeavor, where paragons of intellect were held to have the last word on many subjects (consider Aristotle for natural science or Galen for medicine). For mathematics, the Quadruvium included Arithmetic and Geometry (heck, that was two out of four), where Nicomachus and Euclid were the 'paragons' for mathematical sciences (Moslem works of mathematics entered into the west starting in the 12th century, such as Al-Khwarizmis's book on algebra, the 12th century was a period of increased work on mathematics. Certainly, before that, computation itself was highly impeded by the atrocious Roman number system. :)
Euclid's Elements include both sections on geometry and number theory and this is very close to the modern sense of mathematics, which consists of axiomitizing abstract objects and deriving their properties through rigorous proofs. Nicomachus is typical of medieval scholarship in that he considered arithmetic from an almost numerological viewpoint, instead of that of practical computation. Awesomely enough, he also wrote one of the early texts on music theory.
EDIT: I was perusing the book "The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages" by H. Rashdall -pdf here - and he throws out the comment (pp 442-443) that mathematics were studied in Univ. Paris in the 1300s, however (italics added for emphasis):
Such books were Euclid (the first six books), the Almagestum of Ptolemy,
the de Sphaera of the Englishman Johannes de Sacrobosco,the Perspectiva Communis (i.e. Optics) of another Englishman, John of Pisa (written in 1280). Instruction in Algebra and Arithmetic is also mentioned in general terms. At the same time the mere fact that the Mathematical books are passed over with such scant courtesy by the reforming Cardinarls seems to show what there are other grounds for supposing, namely, the Mathematics were more seriously cultivated in Oxford and some of the German Universities than at Paris.
The faculty at U. Paris did not seem to be as interested in the Trivium and Quadrivium that at other places, either.
Another point of view is that mathematics might have been weaker (for idiosyncratic reasons?) at the Univ. level in France in late Medieval times, but there was also a parallel system of 'abacus' schools (for merchants) and quite a bit of elementary and grammar school education available, which may be where much of the (basic) mathematical learning took place. Some of this appears in David Sheffler's article Late Medieval Education: Continuity and Change, History Compass (2010, pp. 1067-1082).
Upvote:0
Not 100% certain, but I suspect a solution along these lines:
1. There seems to have been a "war" in France between the algorists and abacists, with counting-boards or -tables still being used perhaps all the way up to the French Revolution
2. France of François 1er (and yes, dammit, I'm a hundred years out of date, my apologies...) was also highly "competitive" with Italy, jealous of its Imperial Roman ancestry
3. Italy was most definitely leading the way in that most practical of mathematics, accounting.
So French math teachers may well have felt their methods were lagging behind and hence of little or lesser worth.
Comments welcome.
Upvote:1
"Late medieval" (as the OP defines it up to "…; Briasson; 1737") French education was not "recalcitrant" to math. France produced a noted mathematician, Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century, and later, Joseph Louis Lagrange in the eighteenth.
What may be true is that French mathematics education was "relativized" by other, more pressing concerns such as theology. For instance, of France's "Three Estates," the first estate is the clergy. The nobility is "only" second, and the people, third.
Upvote:4
I would not say that education in the Middle Age was "recalcitrant" to mathematics. (There was a general decline of education in Europe, but this was a decline in everything, nothing special about math). Arithmetic and astronomy were taught. The Church needed astronomy (not astrology!) for calendar purposes at least. This was called "Computus", computation of the date of Easter. Same happened in other cultures (Islamic, Chinese. One of the Seven Noble Arts of Confucius, an analog of European trivium and quadrium, was mathematics. Very non-trivial astronomical computations were practiced in India too.)
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