2023-11-05 16:00:06
INGRAM/PHOTONONSTOP
“The World of Mathematics”, under the direction of Pierre-Michel Menger and Pierre Verschueren, Seuil, “Les livres du nouveau monde”, 826 p., €36, digital €26.
What world do mathematicians live in? It is easy to understand that a surgeon or a computer scientist lives in a world of dense interactions with their colleagues, in which access to material resources and the support of social institutions are essential to personal success. But, for a mathematician, it is another matter. Centuries of anecdotes and stereotypes have accustomed us to depict him as a cerebral and solitary being, whose success owes more to personal talent than to the social environment in which he finds himself. Mathematics would be practiced, in short, outside the world. Away from society.
It is to undermine this image of Epinal that the sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger, professor at the Collège de France, and the historian Pierre Verschueren have brought together, in The World of Mathematicsthe contributions of around twenty specialists in this “prestigious, demanding and intimidating science”.
Not all of them speak of exactly the same contexts, as the geographical and historical spectrum covered in the work is broad. But, by studying the job market, the professional culture, the careers, the ways of forming a community or existing publicly of mathematicians, they converge towards the same observation. If mathematicians occupy an eminent place in the academic world and if they can claim to work towards the production of universal knowledge, it is not because of the singular genius that inhabits them, but rather because they have collectively put put in place the social structures that ensure the proper functioning and reproduction of their « monde ».
An aristocratic foundation
The first of these is what Bernard Zarca calls the“professional ethos” mathematicians. The work of these scientists is, for the sociologist, “eminently socialized”. It is in fact through contact with other mathematicians that we learn the taste for reflexivity, abstraction and rigor which characterizes this discipline. But it is also in the mathematical community that another central value of this ethos is cultivated: competitiveness.
This is learned very early on at school or in preparatory class. It subsequently continues to inspire the most seasoned professional mathematicians. The first of these to prove a conjecture – a must! – is he not entitled to give it his name and thus eclipse that of his competitors? Few scientific communities are as elitist as that of mathematicians. They do not only believe in the unequal distribution of talents between them. They also give this inequality an aristocratic foundation, by associating the truth of their reasoning with moral criteria such as beauty.
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