Heritage and patrimonialization of mathematics (18th-20th centuries) – PatriMaths

This project studies, from a historical point of view, the processes of patrimonialization of which mathematics was the object, from the 18th to the 20th century, via printed media gathering what is worth preserving in terms of mathematical knowledge (encyclopedias, specialized or generalist dictionaries, complete works of mathematicians, collections of treatises and manuals) or intended to gather and index a part of the knowledge already produced (libraries, bibliographic indexes). By studying these processes over time and from a social and cultural history perspective that mobilizes local, national and international scales, the project aims to understand what constitutes mathematical heritage at a given time and for a given community, how it is created through selection, appropriation, and adaptation of knowledge and practices, and how a heritage is mobilized in order to practice mathematics, to build the identity of a group or to legitimize the discipline. The period studied (from the 18th to the 20th century) and the large geographical scale (France, Great Britain, the United States, Italy) allow us to inscribe this process in the long term and to take into account the diversity of social logics that preside over the constitution of mathematical heritages (professional circles, teaching, general public).

The project is based on a reflection on digital humanities, as a tool of patrimonlaiization but also as a research tool for SHS works and as a communication tool allowing a large public to have access to a more and more important part of the cultural and scientific heritage. The creation and the animation of a digital platform allow us to take advantage of these possibilities, but also to revive and to make known to a large public, in particular teachers, unknown parts of the mathematical heritage,

The project addresses the heritage of mathematics according to three complementary issues, in which quantitative analyses and case-based approaches are combined:

- Heritage dynamics and communities:
The project aims at identifying and listing, notably by means of a bibliographic and biographical knowledge base, various heritage groups according to periods and geographical and/or socio-professional spaces. For this purpose, it relies on dictionaries and encyclopedias specifically dedicated to mathematics, as well as the inclusion of mathematics in publications of this type intended for specific communities (engineers, craftsmen, women, etc.) or for a large public, both in France and abroad,

- Patrimonialization by selection and accumulation: supports, places and actors
The project also proposes to write a history from below of the forms of patrimonialization of mathematics, aiming at restoring the interactions of individual, collective and institutional logics, in order to understand the processes of constitution of heritages (selection, constraints, classification, inventories), the stakes of these initiatives (preservation, transmission, delimitation of domains) and their uses (learning, construction of new knowledge, memory).

- Legitimization of heritage and memory of mathematics.
Based on a detailed study of the heritage trajectories of particular mathematical knowledge, the project will reveal the modes of legitimization of what constitutes, in a given social space, "good" knowledge and "good" practices, the re-actualization that this legitimization allows and the forms of oblivion that it induces. The examination of the posterity of the actors and actresses of mathematics will lead us to question the processes of construction of genealogies and filiations, and the role of " figures of mathematicians" in the construction of values and identities associated with mathematics.