Introduction

Writing, geometry and practice are not analogous but inextricable and the same. Yet equally common in mathematical writing are figures and rhetorics which dirty somewhat the clean lines of geometric discipline. Francis Bacon is famous for his articulation of a radical humanism which shifted the attention of science from idealist contemplation to the improvement of the human condition, and which reduced the material world to ‘disciplined’, manipulable mathematical form. The art of mathematical surveying is often the centrepiece for cultural histories of the commodification and colonization of early modern ‘space’. In most cases the values attached by early modern writers to one branch of the mathematical arts applied equally to another branch. Early modern mathematicians and geographers who published to promote their knowledge and their arts typically hedged their bets, like William Cuningham, between liberal scholarship and profit; between the study and the marketplace. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.