Abstract
Harriot was an English mathematician and philosopher working in diverse fields of contemporary knowledge such as algebra, astronomy, navigation, cartography, architecture, mechanics, optics, alchemy, linguistics, and biblical chronology. Besides a small book on the New Found Land of Virginia and a posthumously edited work on algebra, his work is handed down to us solely in the form of about 5,200 sheets of working notes, a fact that complicates the appraisal of his achievements.
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References
Primary Literature
British Museum Add MS 6782–9, Petworth House (Sussex), HMC 240–1; see http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/content/scientific_revolution/harriot/harriot_manuscripts
Harriot, Thomas 1588. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. London: s.n.
Har[r]iot, Thomas. 1631. Artis analyticae praxis, ad aequationes algebraicas noua, expedia, & generali methodo, resoluendas: tractatus. London: Barker.
Harriot, Thomas 2007. Thomas Harriot’s Artis analyticae Praxis: An English translation with commentary, trans. and ed. Muriel Seltman and Robert Goulding. New York: Springer.
Secondary Literature
Fox, Robert (ed.). 2000. Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan man of science. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Fox, Robert (ed.). 2012. Thomas Harriot and his world: Mathematics, exploration, and natural philosophy in early modern England. Farnham: Ashgate.
Schemmel, Matthias. 2008. The English Galileo: Thomas Harriot’s work on motion as an example of preclassical mechanics. Dordrecht: Springer.
Shirley, John W. (ed.). 1974. Thomas Harriot: Renaissance scientist. Oxford: Clarendon.
Shirley, John W. (ed.). 1981. A source book for the study of Thomas Harriot. New York: Arno Press.
Shirley, John W. 1983. Thomas Harriot: A biography. Oxford: Clarendon.
Stedall, Jacqueline A. 2003. The greate invention of algebra: Thomas Harriot’s treatise on equations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Schemmel, M. (2022). Harriot, Thomas. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_330
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