186,795 research outputs found
THE TEACHING OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY: SOME BRIEF CONSIDERATIONS
No full textI teach history of science at the University of Udine, Italy. My students – about 25 – frequently the second and the third year at the faculty of Letters and Philosophy (now called “Polo Umanistico”). They have to pass a sole proof in history of science. Therefore, in this editorial, I would like to face the problems connected with the teaching of history of science to students who have a scarce knowledge of mathematics and who in their future will have probably few contacts with science and its history. Thus, two problems are particularly difficult in this case: 1) to choose the subject properly; 2) to choose the appropriate educational approach. Obviously, the choice of the subject is always important, but if one teaches history of science in a scientific faculty, the situation is, in a sense, easier: for example, at the faculty of physics, one could select a specific course each year, i.e., history of mechanics in a certain period, history of electromagnetism in the 19th century, the theory of optics as it is developed by an author or a series of authors (Euclid, Witelo, Kepler, Snell, Descartes, and so on), etc. Each subject could be dealt with by facing the particular research of each scholar and entering the specific mathematical arguments. This is not possible in a humanities faculty. Thence, I would like to explain my choice and to trace some general considerations
TRENDS AND CHALLENGES OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN MOZAMBIQUE (1975-2016)
No full textMathematics has always been a difficult issue, especially in the African countries. Mozambique is not an exception. This country had been colonized by Portugal until 1975. When the independence was obtained, a socialist regime was adopted (1977). The learning of mathematics entered the struggle against colonial and imperialistic ideas. Its best ally was Paulus Gerdes, one of the most relevant ethnomatematicians of the world, who carried out an intense promotion of this approach to mathematics in Mozambican school system. Albeit the great international impact of Gerdes ' ideas, Mozambique never implemented his methodology. When, at the end of the 80s, the country changed from socialism to liberalism, voting a democratic Constitution in 1990, its school system was aligned to the measures of lntenational Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB). The most recent ones are represented by the Millennium Development Goals. Despite the various reforms of school system, the results of Mozambican children in mathematics are among the worst in Africa. The reasons of such a failure are here explained, through a historical approach based on national documents. The most recent experiences of school reform carried out by international agencies together with national institutions are stressed. The negative results obtained by the Mozambican learners as to mathematics are due to several reasons: 1) a lack of consideration of the Mozambican cultural substrate; 2) an improper massification of the school system, where the quality of instruction has been neglected; 3) the specific choice to marginalize mathematics education
Leibniz: The Philosopher-Scientist
No full textIn the context of an interdisciplinary approach aimed at pointing out the interconnections between science and philosophy in the early modern centuries, no author is probably more interesting than Leibniz
The calculations of areas and volumes using the method of archimedes: Some didactic considerations
No full textNewton’s Geneva Edition (1822): the Notes on Integral calculus
No full textBased on our current scientific and editorial project (Pisano, Bussotti
2014–2022) concerning a critical, commented translation – from Latin into English
– of Newton’s Principia - Geneva Edition (1739-1742), new details and insights
are here presented. The Geneva Edition of the Principia is an annotated
edition of Newton’s masterpiece. The apparatus of notes is broad and longer than
Newton’s text itself. The notes concern and clarify several aspects of Newton’s
procedures and methods, but they also refer to the development of theoretical
mathematics and physics after the publication of Principia’s first edition (1687).
In many notes there are also historical considerations which trace the history of a
certain concept until Newton. Thence, these notes are a precious instrument to
guess some aspects of history of physics and mathematics before Newton, in Newton’s
epoch and immediately after Newton’s death. In this contribution, the notes
concerning integral calculus will be analysed as a case study. They offer an interesting
example of the huge work carried out by the editors of the Geneva Edition
Recensione all’articolo di Aldo Brigaglia, “Es steht schon alles bei Dedekind”: aspetti dell’influenza dell’opera di Dedekind sulla matematica italiana, Matematica, Cultura e Società. Rivista dell'Unione Matematica Italiana Serie 1 2 (2017), fasc. n.1, p. 17-43
No full textL’edizione lucchese e l’edizione livornese della Encyclopédie: le note scientifiche, matematiche e geografiche
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