Writing, Drawing, and Preaching Geometry in the Early Modern German Mines

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mathematical sciences played an increasingly important role in Western societies. Most historical accounts try to understand how the study of nature came to use mathematical methods and how mathematical concepts and tool became the standard tool for scholars. A more fundamental and yet lesser-known shift happened outside of the scholarly world. Practical mathematics, understood as a set of basic skills in arithmetic and geometry, became ubiquitous in European civic life for officials, engineer and artisans of all kinds. Early modern mines build a perfect case study for this hypothesis, both given their crucial economic importance and since they are considered a crucible of modern technical rationality. I will analyze the growing importance and the public nature of mathematical arts in the German mining states. Scholars observed practitioners and then wrote about geometria subterranea. Numerous sketches were drawn to illustrate the surveying methods that were used. Computing schools and teaching contracts attest of a lively and efficient tradition of practical teaching. Even sermons routinely presented to a general audience the essential features and principles of geometric operations. Surveying was a public practice whose geometrical character would lend gravitas and accuracy to legal decisions. These ubiquitous uses greatly heightened a public recognition of the efficiency of mathematics.