Weaving and Mathematics: An Impossible Interlacing?

Although being one of the oldest techniques of mankind weaving was not always understood as carrying knowledge or as a form of theoretical knowledge. Since Platon philosophers were often ignoring or trivializing this technique; it is only in the 17th century when weaving was more and more connected to mechanics and machines that natural philosophers tried to mathematize or formalize it. But of what consisted this mathematical reconceptualization of the knowledge of textiles?

Weaving and mathematics are not generally associated with one another in people’s minds. The project, situated both in Symbolic Material and Weaving research areas, is based on the premise that such an association was, in contrast, common in Europe in the 17th century. During this century, several thinkers and mathematicians, among them the mathematician, logician and philosopher of sciences Joachim Jungius (1587–1657), the physician, mathematician, alchemist and initiator of numerous projects Johann Joachim Becher (1635–1682), and one of the great thinkers of the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1767), considered the practices, looms and machines associated with weaving and knitting as carrying and embodying mathematical and geometrical knowledge. The project aims to examine the hitherto unexplored relationship between these artisanal practices and the evolving conceptions of mathematics in the 17th century, is composed thematically of two axes: a historical one, concentrating on the developments of weaving techniques and the encounters of the various thinkers with them, and an epistemological one, addressing how the migration of artisanal knowledge into mathematical knowledge was conceptualized by these thinkers. The project will shed new light not only on how material, artisanal practices may have prompted the discovery of new mathematical knowledge in the 17th century, but also on how the image of mathematics itself may have changed in the early modern period.

Results can be found in the upcoming publication »On Joachim Jungius’ Texturæ Contemplatio. Texture, Weaving and Natural Philosophy in the 17th Century« at Springer Link. For more information please see the publisher's website.