Orateur
Description
A locus classicus in the historiography of (early) 19th century mathematics is that of the divide between French and English practices and conceptions of that science -- a divide often framed in terms of foundational approaches, and pedagogical practices, and cultural matrices. A closer look at this historiography, however, reveals that it draws on a rather narrow conception of its subject: be it by the limited sample of mathematical topics it engages with or by the few locales it visits -- to put it bluntly, calculus and its foundations in Paris and Cambridge exclusively. This paper proposes to reassess this narrative in light of a more expansive selection of episodes in the history of mathematics, and, in doing so, to question the relevance of such sweeping national and cultural categories.
