Michael J Barany
Biographic Data
| ID | 1172825 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael J Barany |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael J |
| FAMILY NAME | Barany |
| SIGNATURE | BARANY M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4067-5112 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The treachery of small numbers
On Remediation
Nothing ever works quite as imagined. When algorithms and mathematical systems work, to the extent they do, imagination makes all the difference. Work, imagination, and the space between them manifest in mediated practices of conceptual figuration sustained through regimes of remediation: repair, correction, backfilling, but also (as a pun) patterns of mediation and material transmutation. Such remediation links algorithmic practice and fantasy f…
A "Truly International" Discipline
Examining how, and to what effect, the phrase “truly international” became central to the rhetoric and organization of the American-hosted 1950 International Congress of Mathematicians, I trace the negotiation of a “truly international” discipline from mathematicians’ first international congresses around the turn of the century across two world wars and their divisive interlude. Two failed attempts to host International Congresses of Mathematici…
Abstract relations
Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, systematic scientific abstracting played a crucial role in reconfiguring the sciences on an international scale. For mathematicians, the 1931 launch of the Zentralblatt für Mathematik and 1940 launch of Mathematical Reviews marked and intensified a fundamental transformation, not just to the geographic scale of professional mathematics but to the very nature of mathematicians’ research and theories.…
Impersonation and personification in mid-twentieth century mathematics
Pseudonymous mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki and his lesser-known counterpart E.S. Pondiczery, devised respectively in France and in Princeton in the mid-1930s, together index a pivotal moment in the history of modern mathematics, marked by international infrastructures and institutions that depended on mathematicians' willingness to play along with mediated personifications. By pushing these norms and practices of personification to their farcica…
Savage numbers and the evolution of civilization in Victorian prehistory
This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappr…
That small and unsensible shape”
This paper probes the foundations and limits of visual representation in the sciences through a close reading of the diagrams that accompanied definitions of the geometric point in the first century of printed editions of Euclid’s Elements. I begin with the modal form for such diagrams of Euclid’s “small and unsensible shape,” showing how it incorporates a broad spectrum of conventions and practices related to the point’s philosophical and practi…
Savage numbers and the evolution of civilization in Victorian prehistory
This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappr…
Impersonation and personification in mid-twentieth century mathematics
Pseudonymous mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki and his lesser-known counterpart E.S. Pondiczery, devised respectively in France and in Princeton in the mid-1930s, together index a pivotal moment in the history of modern mathematics, marked by international infrastructures and institutions that depended on mathematicians' willingness to play along with mediated personifications. By pushing these norms and practices of personification to their farcica…
A "Truly International" Discipline
Examining how, and to what effect, the phrase “truly international” became central to the rhetoric and organization of the American-hosted 1950 International Congress of Mathematicians, I trace the negotiation of a “truly international” discipline from mathematicians’ first international congresses around the turn of the century across two world wars and their divisive interlude. Two failed attempts to host International Congresses of Mathematici…
Abstract relations
Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, systematic scientific abstracting played a crucial role in reconfiguring the sciences on an international scale. For mathematicians, the 1931 launch of the Zentralblatt für Mathematik and 1940 launch of Mathematical Reviews marked and intensified a fundamental transformation, not just to the geographic scale of professional mathematics but to the very nature of mathematicians’ research and theories.…
That small and unsensible shape”
This paper probes the foundations and limits of visual representation in the sciences through a close reading of the diagrams that accompanied definitions of the geometric point in the first century of printed editions of Euclid’s Elements. I begin with the modal form for such diagrams of Euclid’s “small and unsensible shape,” showing how it incorporates a broad spectrum of conventions and practices related to the point’s philosophical and practi…
Savage numbers and the evolution of civilization in Victorian prehistory
This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappr…
Impersonation and personification in mid-twentieth century mathematics
Pseudonymous mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki and his lesser-known counterpart E.S. Pondiczery, devised respectively in France and in Princeton in the mid-1930s, together index a pivotal moment in the history of modern mathematics, marked by international infrastructures and institutions that depended on mathematicians' willingness to play along with mediated personifications. By pushing these norms and practices of personification to their farcica…
Abstract relations
Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, systematic scientific abstracting played a crucial role in reconfiguring the sciences on an international scale. For mathematicians, the 1931 launch of the Zentralblatt für Mathematik and 1940 launch of Mathematical Reviews marked and intensified a fundamental transformation, not just to the geographic scale of professional mathematics but to the very nature of mathematicians’ research and theories.…
The treachery of small numbers
On Remediation
Nothing ever works quite as imagined. When algorithms and mathematical systems work, to the extent they do, imagination makes all the difference. Work, imagination, and the space between them manifest in mediated practices of conceptual figuration sustained through regimes of remediation: repair, correction, backfilling, but also (as a pun) patterns of mediation and material transmutation. Such remediation links algorithmic practice and fantasy f…
A "Truly International" Discipline
Examining how, and to what effect, the phrase “truly international” became central to the rhetoric and organization of the American-hosted 1950 International Congress of Mathematicians, I trace the negotiation of a “truly international” discipline from mathematicians’ first international congresses around the turn of the century across two world wars and their divisive interlude. Two failed attempts to host International Congresses of Mathematici…
Philosophy (6 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · History and Theory of Mathematics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (3 works)