🥳Publication day for #UndergroundMathematics! Thanks to everyone involved❤️

Here’s a short🧵to its main argument: How did practical mathematics and a culture of accuracy developed in EM Europe? Rationality wasn’t just about scholars, it included craftsmen and artisans too! Practical mathematics was ubiquitous, from wine gauging to mercantile arithmetic. It was widely depicted, as here in ‘The Measurers’ (see Jim Bennett’s great piece on this painting @HSMOxford). And yet, usual narratives have forgotten a whole discipline: subterranean geometry!

Today a 🧵on mining maps, how to look at them, and what they tell us about how people perceived the underground world! With bits of map history, paper history, and obviously lots of #UndergroundMathematics. For the untrained eye, these maps are difficult to understand... #HistSTM These maps are in fact a recent development, mostly in the 17th century. An old miner’s proverb said that “no one can see through stone”, and in fact it used to be a huge problem: how to see limits of concessions, to locate water wheels and ore vein?