Maurice Caveing

Maurice Caveing (born 1923) was a French historian of mathematics specializing in ancient mathematics. His historiographical approach seeks to show how, in specific social and cultural contexts, people developed mathematical knowledge that cannot be understood independently of those contexts. This approach, which combines the history of ideas with an analysis of the historical conditions of intellectual production, brings him close to positivism and to a humanism attuned to the human dimension of scientific work. His 1982 thesis, entitled La constitution du type mathématique de l'idéalité dans la pensée grecque, examines the conditions under which Greek thought developed the concept of an ideal mathematical object. His major publications include Essai sur le savoir mathématique dans la Mésopotamie et l'Égypte anciennes (1994) and Le problème des objets dans la pensée mathématique (2004).