David Waszek

  • Researcher, École Normale Supérieure

I am currently a (fixed-term) researcher at the École Normale Supérieure, in a research project on scientific drafts headed by Emmylou Haffner and hosted by the ITEM research group. I studied mathematics and philosophy; I got a PhD in the history and philosophy of mathematics from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, then did post-docs at McGill University (Montreal) and at the CNRS (Archives Henri-Poincaré, Nancy).

In Fall 2023, I am a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science of the university of Pittsburgh.

Research

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the way mathematics is expressed: the notations or diagrams one uses, the definitions one chooses, the way one structures papers or books, etc. Why do these matter? In particular, how are these related to epistemic values like intelligibility, explanatoriness, and so on? I approach these questions from a variety of angles, historical as well as philosophical. On the historical side, I have studied 17th- and 18th-century analysis as well as the history of mathematical logic in the 19th century, and am currently working on 19th-century enumerative geometry.

2023

  1. Signs as a Theme in the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice. B. Sriraman (ed.), Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, Springer, 2023. (AAM, doi)
  2. Informational equivalence but computational differences? Herbert Simon on representations in scientific practice, Minds and Machines, 2023. (shareLink, AAM, doi)
  3. Le rôle des notations dans la découverte de l’analogie des puissances et des différences de Leibniz. Almagest 14(2):256–266, 2023. Conference paper from 2017. (doi)

2022

  1. Are Euclid’s Diagrams ‘Representations’? On an argument by Ken Manders. M. Zack and D. Schlimm (eds.), Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics. The CSHPM 2019-2020 Volume, Birkhäuser, 2022. (shareLink, doi, AAM)
  2. Are Larger Studies Always Better? Sample Size and Data Pooling Effects in Research Communities (with Cyrille Imbert). Conference paper, PSA 2022.

2021

  1. Calculus as Method or Calculus as Rules? Boole and Frege on the aims of a logical calculus (with Dirk Schlimm). Synthese, 199(5–6):11913–11943, 2021. (shareLink, doi)

2020

  1. Multiple Readability in Principle and Practice (with Dirk Schlimm). Logique et analyse 251:231–260, 2020. (AAM, doi)
  2. Review of New Light on George Boole, by D. MacHale and Y. Cohen. Historia Mathematica 51:91–93, 2020. (doi)

2019 and before

  1. Les représentations en mathématiques. PhD thesis. (Some typos corrected, Jan. 2019.)
  2. Rigor and the Context-Dependence of Diagrams: The Case of Euler Diagrams. P. Chapman, G. Stapleton, A. Moktefi, S. Perez-Kriz and F. Bellucci (eds.), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference, Springer, 2018, 382–389.
  3. A conversation with Sun-Joo Shin. APhEx 17, 2018.

Forthcoming

  1. John Venn’s Pluralism Regarding Logical Forms (with Dirk Schlimm). E. Ficara, A.-S. Heinemann and A. Reichenberger (eds.), Revisiting History and Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. Festschrift for Volker Peckhaus. College publications, forthcoming (2024?).
  2. Un « ouvrage accompli de la statuaire grecque ». Positionnement, forme et contenu dans la genèse d’un mémoire mathématique de G.-H. Halphen (with Nicolas Michel). Genesis 60.
  3. Le fonds George-Henri Halphen à la bibliothèque de l’Institut de France (with Nicolas Michel). Genesis 60.

Manuscripts available upon request

  1. Interpretation and uninterpretability in Boole: A reassessment.
  2. Uninterpretables and how to interpret them: Boole’s symbols through the eyes of Venn (with Dirk Schlimm).
  3. Notational differences, exploration and discovery in mathematics.
  4. ‘Eine prachtvolle Machine’: Notational innovation and the genesis of the Schubert calculus. (with Nicolas Michel)

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Editorial work

Since 2021, I have been co-editor of the Annals of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics. We edit a yearly collection of papers, published by Birkhäuser.

2021 volume   ·   2022 volume

Expository material

Some old expository material, on the off-chance it may be of use:
RCA₀ et l’analyse calculable. A short note on the relation between RCA₀ and computable analysis (2013).
Opérades et complexes de graphe. On graph complexes, following Kontsevich (Master’s thesis, 2012).
Cochains. On rational homotopy theory, following Quillen and Sullivan (Cambridge Part III essay, 2011).
Calculabilité en analyse. Quadrature 72:36–40, 2009.