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Navigation and Mathematics: A Match Made in the Heavens?

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Navigational Enterprises in Europe and its Empires, 1730–1850

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which elite astronomy and mathematics influenced the practice of navigation in Britain in the period some historians celebrate as the birth of scientific navigation.2 Although some writers, particularly those closest to the practice, consider navi-gation to be an art, most tell of the ‘science’ of navigation and most put the start of scientific navigation with the advent of the Nautical Almanac.3 Obviously these developments, from intuition to reliance on a mathematically based procedure, were not instantaneous or without problems.

[W]e may be said to receive from the Mathematics […] Increase of Fortune, and conveniences of Labour […] we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea

Isaac Barrow, 17341

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Jane Wess
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Museums Greenwich, UK

    Richard Dunn (Senior Curator for the History of Science) (Senior Curator for the History of Science)

  2. University of Kent, UK

    Rebekah Higgitt (Lecturer in History) (Lecturer in History)

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© 2015 Jane Wess

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Wess, J. (2015). Navigation and Mathematics: A Match Made in the Heavens?. In: Dunn, R., Higgitt, R. (eds) Navigational Enterprises in Europe and its Empires, 1730–1850. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137520647_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137520647_11

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56744-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52064-7

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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