Πρόλογος (Preface)

The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics by Paul Laurence Rose is a landmark work, indispensable for anyone wishing to study the intellectual movement of the Renaissance period. The book investigates the relationship between humanism and mathematics, as well as the contribution of both to the emergence of modern mathematics. The work challenges deeply entrenched historiographical assumptions put forward by prominent scholars such as Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) and Marshall Clagett (1916–2005), according to which Renaissance mathematics constituted little more than a relatively minor interlude between the mathematics of the medieval scholastic tradition, on the one hand, and the great achievements of the seventeenth century, on the other. By contrast, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics reveals a very different historical reality: it restores mathematics and mathematicians of this period to a role that was anything but marginal, while at the same time laying the foundations for a line of research that continues to the present day.