About

Amir Alexander is an Adjunct Professor in the UCLA Department of History, with a research focus on the deep interconnections between mathematics and its social, cultural, and political contexts. His work emphasizes how critical mathematical developments are inseparable from broader historical trends that motivate and give meaning to them. Alexander's recent book, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (2024), explores the origins of the American grid system, attributing its creation to Thomas Jefferson's vision of transforming the American wilderness into a landscape of freedom and order, reflecting Jefferson's influence on American spatial and cultural identity. His scholarship demonstrates how geometry and mathematical ideas have shaped landscapes, art, ideals, and politics from Versailles to Washington D.C. Alexander's previous publications, including "Geometrical Landscapes," "Duel at Dawn," "Infinitesimal," and "Proof!" explore themes such as the development of modern mathematics, the cultural narratives surrounding mathematical concepts, and the historical evolution of geometry. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mathematics and History from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Art history
• Mathematics education
• Art
• Philosophy
• History
• Algorithm
• Classics
• World Wide Web
• Theology

Selected publications

• The Orderly Universe

  2023-03-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract An algorithm places steep requirements on the universe in which it operates: for a predetermined set of operations to reliably produce correct results or desired outcomes, the world must be orderly and predictable. Newton’s development of the calculus from the earlier method of indivisibles is a case in point. The method was a broad and flexible approach, which made few assumptions about broader order in the world. The calculus, in contrast, is an algorithm that applies a small set of rules to an infinite number of cases, and consequently assumes a world of strict order and predictability. A study of Newton’s development of the calculus from 1665 to 1704 shows a gradual transition from the “special case” approach of the method, to the orderly rule-bound universe of the calculus. Such a move extends beyond mathematics, and requires a change in philosophical, religious, and even political perspectives. Newton’s development of the calculus, it follows, is not just a mathematical achievement, but a cultural one.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>The Spatial Reformation: Euclid between Man, Cosmos, and God</i>. By Michael J. Sauter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+328. $89.95.

  The Journal of Modern History · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Art
  • Art history
  PublisherDOI

• Blundeville, Thomas

  Springer eBooks · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Art history
  • History
  PublisherDOI

• 半劣正規因子を持つ群の超溶解度について【JST・京大機械翻訳】

  Journal of Group Theory · 2020

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Mathematics
  Publisher

• Michael E. Hobart. The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide.

  The American Historical Review · 2019-10-22 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  That something dramatic took place in the European mind in or about 1500, ending one age and ushering in another, is hardly news. It is, rather, a commonplace of historical writing that has proven remarkably impervious to scholarly assaults. Michael E. Hobart, author of The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide, endorses the outlines of this traditional tale but endows it with a new interpretation: at the core of the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, he argues, was a shift in information technologies. A European knowledge system based on “alphabetic literacy” and its accompanying “classifying temper” was replaced by one governed by “relational numeracy” and focused on the “reverse engineering” of nature. This led to the emergence of an unbridgeable chasm between science, founded on the new approach, and religion, which remained tethered to the older technology. First developed in ancient Greece, alphabetic literacy reached its fullest expression in the writings of Aristotle and his Scholastic adherents in medieval Europe. In medieval Scholasticism, Hobart explains, “letter symbols made words; words tendered definitions; definitions formed statements; statements organized demonstrations; and demonstrations yielded knowledge” (51). The knowledge so produced was by its nature classificatory. Words, and the objects they represent, were assigned to their proper categories (e.g., substance, quality) and related to others through the Aristotelian “causes.” The goal was not to uncover new things, but to correctly classify things that were already commonly known.

  PublisherDOI

• Mark Coeckelbergh. <i>New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine</i>. x + 320 pp., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 2017. $50 (cloth).

  Isis · 2018-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Blundeville, Thomas

  2017-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Response to Douglas Jesseph

  The Mathematical Intelligencer · 2017-05-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• On Indivisibles and Infinitesimals: A Response to David Sherry, “The Jesuits and the Method of Indivisibles”

  Foundations of Science · 2017-03-10 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mathematics: Groping in the dark for glimpses of beauty

  Nature · 2015-03-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• S Monakhov Victor

  University of Calabar

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award for 2003