The Elizabethan mathematics of everything: John Dee's ‘Mathematicall praeface’ to Euclid's Elements

Abstract

This article considers John Dee's famous classification and justification of ‘the Sciences, and Artes Mathematicall’ in his Mathematicall praeface to Henry Billingsley's Elements of geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570), the first English translation of Euclid. It is a revised version of a lecture presented to the British Society for the History of Mathematics Autumn Meeting, October 2010, under the title ‘John Dee and the Elizabethan Mathematics of Everything’.

Notes

¹ Dee also provided notes and proofs in Books X–XIII of the Elements. On Dee's mathematical contributions to the Elements, see Heilbron 1978 and Johnston, 2012.

² In practice, however, Dee sometimes blurred the distinction between number and magnitude: see Johnston 2012.

³ ‘And therefore the great and godly Philosopher Anitius Boetius, sayd: Omnia quæcunque a primæva rerum natura constructa sunt, Numerorum videntur ratione formata. Hoc enim fuit principale in animo Conditoris Exemplar. That is: All thinges (which from the very first originall being of thinges, have bene framed and made) do appeare to be Formed by the reason of Numbers. For this was the principall example or patterne in the minde of the Creator.’ (sig. *j^r)

⁴ See Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, 1547–80, 1856, 249–250, 255–257, 275–277.