THE MATHEMATICS OF SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SCIENCE

This paper analyzes how was studied the role of mathematics in the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in contemporary scientific historiography, highlighting the one hand, the limits and scope that offers traditional historiography about the hegemony of mathematics in natural philosophy, and moreover the revisionist perspectives that resort to more specific studies, which offer an understanding more conceptual and contextual regarding the introduction of mathematics in natural philosophy. First, I will discuss in general terms the way that contemporary scientific historiography has addressed the issue of mathematics in the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Second, I will present the limits and scope of traditional narrative to highlight the importance and the need to include in studies of mathematics and natural philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a position that investigates, too, obstacles, mistakes and transformations a discipline as a mathematics that has been conceived as a fundamental discipline in the origins of modern science.