Mispar
Compiling and constructing a complete database of transcribed and annotated medieval Hebrew arithmetic and algebra
In collaboration with Naomi ARADI stationed in Israel, Roy Wagner has initiated Mispar to create an online database of annotated transcripts of all surviving Hebrew medieval arithmetic and algebraic treatises. The transcripts will be organized into an open access and community expandable database that will include English descriptions of the component of each treatise as well as search features that will allow for comparing a given thematic component across all treatises.
The database will provide comprehensive free access to medieval Hebrew arithmetic knowledge. The database will allow gradual open access enhancements (e.g. translations of transcripts, adding and correcting annotations, adding internal and external cross references). This capacity will turn the database into a vibrant tool for research and scientific exchange on the subject. The database could be extended to include manuscripts or transcripts in other languages (European and non-European), gradually becoming a source for understanding medieval mathematics as a whole.
The project will allow a first of its kind comprehensive view of the texts of an entire scientific culture, providing an invaluable tool for historians of mathematics – a tool that can be extended to other scientific cultures as well.
While Hebrew arithmetic might be viewed as esoteric, it is of central importance on at least two dimensions. First, medieval Hebrew science served as mediator between Arabic, Latin and European vernacular science. Therefore, understanding medieval Hebrew science is inseparable from understanding Mediterranean medieval science as a cross cultural whole. Second, arithmetic is a prerequisite for all natural sciences, and so our understanding of its history is a prerequisite for understanding the history of other natural sciences. This project also emphasizes diversity in science, exposing the local knowledge of cultures and classes (middle and low class practitioners, rather than highbrow scientists) marginalized by mainstream historiography.