When the first English translation of Euclid appeared in 1570, its preface was written by the most learned — and most notorious — man in England: John Dee, mathematician, astrologer and counsellor to Elizabeth I. His Mathematicall Praeface is a passionate survey of every art the mathematical sciences touch, from navigation and architecture to music and ‘thaumaturgike’, the making of wonders.
It is at once a defence of mathematics for the common reader and a map of Renaissance knowledge drawn by its strangest cartographer. Download the free EPUB and see why this preface became more famous than the translation it introduced.