Authors Meet Critics: Massimo Mazzotti, “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”

<p><span class= "yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">Recorded on October 17, 2023, this video features an "Authors Meet Critics" panel on the book <a href= "https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo195982549.html"> <em>Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity</em></a>, by Massimo Mazzotti, Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of History and the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science. Professor Mazzotti was joined in conversation by Matthew L. Jones, the Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University, and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Thomas Laqueur, the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, moderated. </span></p> <p><span class="yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">This event was co-sponsored by the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society and the UC Berkeley Department of History.</span></p> <p><span class="yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">The Social Science Matrix “Authors Meet Critics” book series features lively discussions about recently published books authored by social scientists at UC Berkeley. For each event, the author discusses the key arguments of their book with fellow scholars. Learn more at</span> <span class= "yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color"><a href= "https://matrix.berkeley.edu">https://matrix.berkeley.edu</a></span><span class="yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">.</span></p> <p><strong><span class= "yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">ABOUT THE BOOK</span></strong></p> <p><span class="yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color">A forgotten episode of mathematical resistance reveals the rise of modern mathematics and its cornerstone, mathematical purity, as political phenomena. The nineteenth century opened with a major shift in European mathematics, and in the Kingdom of Naples, this occurred earlier than elsewhere. Between 1790 and 1830 its leading scientific institutions rejected as untrustworthy the “very