Abstract
The term “applied mathematics” has always had many senses, like the term “mixed mathematics” commonly used in the early modern period. Now, “mixed” sciences were long understood as those that study more than one of the sciences in the Aristotelian classification of subject-genera, even if Aristotle himself was a bit unclear on the issue of the proper subject of mathematical inquiry. From very early days, this notion of mixing carried with it the idea of taint, just as the word “pure”, used for the unmixed kind of mathematics, suggests. These terms carried connotations that continued to be felt well into the early modern era.
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Archibald, T. (2015). Saturn’s Rings from Laplace to Poincaré. In: Rowe, D., Horng, WS. (eds) A Delicate Balance: Global Perspectives on Innovation and Tradition in the History of Mathematics. Trends in the History of Science. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12030-0_5
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