A project of Flanders Heritage Libraries in cooperation with Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library (Antwerp), Museum Plantin-Moretus (Antwerp), Public Library Bruges, University Library Ghent and KU Leuven Libraries with the support of the Flemish Government.
This exhibition was created as part of a project of assessing the significance of mathematical early printed books from the collections of five Flemish heritage libraries, coordinated by Flanders Heritage Libraries. The approximately 250 beautiful mathematical early printed books from the years 1570 to 1620 of the project are the foundation of this exhibition.
In 2020 it is 400 years since Simon Stevin [pronounce: Steven] died. Today, this famous ‘Bruggeling’ (citizen of Bruges) is usually described as a mathematician but Stevin was so much more: he built the first sailing wagon, improved the design of the windmill, wrote about fortification and published on the calculation of interest, knowledge that until then belonged to the monopoly of the bankers.
Whereas the scientific world today uses a rather strict distinction between disciplines, early modern scientists such as Stevin were less concerned about the demarcation of their field of work. The homo universalis dealt with all kinds of challenges, from mathematics and physics over astronomy, economics and architecture to music. These were mostly part of the quadrivium, the sciences studying numbers, as they were already taught at medieval universities.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the time of the scientific revolution, in which knowledge progressed by leaps and bounds. Thanks to the printing industry, which stimulated the widespread dissemination of knowledge and international intellectual debate. At the same time, it was an era characterised at least as much by tradition as by innovation, in which magic, religion and science merged into one another.
The publications of the early modern mathematicians are wonderful testimonials to this exciting period of scientific progress. They show how great international personalities and mathematicians from the field, among them many Flemish mathematicians, contributed to the development of mathematics as a discipline.