‘Disturbed’ by Euclid: Thomas Fincke and the reading of Ramist mathematics in sixteenth-century Germany

Abstract

This article presents evidence of the transmission and reception of Petrus Ramus's mathematical pedagogy, as witnessed in a multi-volume Sammelband constructed and used in late sixteenth-century Germany. It considers how the methodological influence of Ramus was transmitted to students by the mathematical work of Thomas Fincke, before suggesting that idiosyncratic users of the Sammelband tangled with authoritative interpretations of Euclid by incorporating their own reading and notational practices. Whilst Fincke's work was aimed toward students familiar with Ramist teaching, marginalia found within the Sammelband reinterpret these intentions, demonstrating the pedagogical relationships shared between Fincke, his predecessors, and the later readers of the volume.