This open access book explores the relations between normative mathematical texts, which encode various forms of measurement, calculation and reasoning, and the practices of accountants, craftspeople, artisans and other social actors. Mathematics is often divided into a theoretical, intellectual, and normative component, on the one hand, and, on the other, a practical-applied component, implemented in various labour and other social contexts. However, this division usually assumes that practice reflects the text, whereas, in reality, their relations are much more diverse. This volume explores how text and practice shape each other, complement each other, contradict each other or even ignore each other. In doing so, it opens up the problem of mathematical text and practice as a varied, multi-dimensional, cross-cultural and global-historical problem, where different contexts called for different negotiations between text and practice.

Senthil Babu D., is a historian of mathematics based at the French Institute of Pondicherry, in south India, where he is involved in studies concerning Nature, Knowledge and Labour. He is coordinating a research programme in the Social History of Vernacular Mathematical Practices in Medieval South India in collaboration with Chair, History and Philosophy of Mathematics at ETH, Zurich. His book, Mathematics and Society: Numbers and Measures in early modern South India, will be published soon by Oxford Universtiy Press in 2022. He is a member of the editorial board of the series, Verum Factum: Studies in Political Epistemology. He is a member of the Politically Mathematics Collective in India.

Roy Wagner has a PhD in mathematics (1997) and a PhD in philosophy and history of science (2007), and his work combines history, philosophy, and social studies of mathematics. Philosophically, he applies structuralist, post-structuralist, semiotic, and pragmatists methods for studying various aspects of mathematical practice. Historically, his work covers Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Indian (Sanskrit and Malayalam), early modern European and modern mathematics. Since 2016 he is professor of history and philosophy of mathematical sciences at ETH Zurich. Among his published books are “Post-structural readings of Gödel’s proof” and “making and breaking mathematical sense”. He also collaborated on soon-to-be-published editions of the Malayalam mathematical treatises.