Introduction to Mathematical Influences and New Directions
This short introduction to “Mathematical Influences and New Directions” articulates the perspectives and concerns that shape the section’s contributions to the Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences.
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Abstract This short introduction to “Mathematical Influences and New Directions” articulates the perspectives and concerns that shape the section’s contributions to the Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences.
Keywords Mathematical influences · Interdisciplinary studies
It would be difficult – and some might justifiably add foolhardy – to underestimate the editorial challenges associated with surveying the ways that mathematics contributes to or finds relevance in the arts and sciences. The points of intersection are richly scattered across both time and space. Moreover, they represent varying degrees of significance and complexity in terms of knowledge production depending on their historico-cultural location. While cosmological, numerological, philosophical, and theological concerns of the past may have diminished in some respects, human history has witnessed an explosive expansion in the “real-world” applicability and effectiveness of mathematics to solving problems and modeling natural as well as social phenomena. The allure, reach, and utility of the discipline are among its most consistently compelling attributes. Even so, to consider mathematical knowledge as only a set of ideas or tools that can be employed to enhance one’s understanding of a particular concern or problem would be to unnecessarily diminish the richness of a more holistic perspective. One can certainly interpret the phrase “mathematics of the arts and
K. G. Valente () Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Sriraman (ed.), Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70658-0_136-2
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sciences” so as to include the various ways by which the subject itself belongs to or influences another area of study. Yet reading the word “of” in a way that signifies belongings or effects of these kinds may still fall short of explicitly exposing and interrogating more complicated relational arrangements. The chapters included in this section undertake the work of inverting a tacitly assumed relationship – whereby mathematics provides analytic leverage in generating useful information particularly related to other areas of study – by examining aspects of other areas of knowledge that pertain to or enhance one’s understanding of mathematics. In them mathematics is not simply a means to an end; rather mathematics, as a body of knowledge as well as a collection of practices, becomes a subject of critical inquiry. Such interventions are productively informed by the rise of interdisciplinary studies in recent decades, a development that encourages paying significant attention to the ways that knowledge crosses boundaries and seriously considers the effects of such migrations. This goes some way to explaining the interest that mathematics and its knowledge, as a subject of inquiry and influence, generates in areas such as film and media, feminist, or queer studies, among others. Even so, examinations from more established
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