Fortification in Focus — Mathematical Methods in Military Architecture of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries and their Sublimation in Civil Architecture

Abstract

In recent years the importance of mathematics as a basic discipline not only for the sciences but also for the humanities has been rediscovered and become the subject of interdisciplinary investigations. Two examples among many are the publication Die mathematischen Wurzeln der Kultur. Mathematische Innovationen und ihre kulturellen Folgen (The mathematical roots of culture — mathematical innovations and their cultural consequences) edited by Jochen Brüning and Eberhard Knobloch, Munich 2005, and the conference “Was zählt. Präsenz und Ordnungsangebote von Zahlen im Mittelalter” (What counts. The presence and medial function of number in the Middle Ages) held 2006 in Berlin. The specific role of geometry in the field of landscape architecture has been pointed out lately and rather pertinently by Volker Remmert in his article “‘Il faut etre un peu geometre’- Die mathematischen Wissenschaften in der Gartenkunst der Frühen Neuzeit” (One has to be a bit of a geometer — the mathematical sciences in the art of the garden in early modern age), published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Wunder und Wissenschaft — Salomon de Caus und die Automatenkunst in Gärten um 1600”, Düsseldorf 2008, (Miracle and science — Salomon de Caus and the art of automatons in gardens of the 1600s).