Descriptive Geometry in Spain as an Example of the Emergence of the Late Modern Outlook on the Relationship Between Science and Technology

Abstract

The teaching of descriptive geometry in Spain spread at the pace of the development of technical education. Despite the awareness of the need of innovation, and the foundation of local schools, until the end of the nineteenth century the State did not organize a network of schools for workers and artisans–technicians. Instead, the efforts were concentrated on the schools for engineers, with two kinds of difficulties: the lack of students, so that the only stable schools were at Madrid (while there was a great demand for elementary and middle technical education); and the relatively unbalanced relationship with the Faculty of Sciences, and specially the mathematical department, which was considered as preparatory for the school of architecture and the several engineering schools. The contribution by Culmann to further development of the graphical instruments of the engineer and the new didactical approach to descriptive geometry by Bellavitis , Fiedler , and Cremona were considered with interest by scholars in Barcelona and Madrid, although this led to an attention being paid almost exclusively to synthetic geometry. As a consequence, descriptive geometry had a key role in the curriculum of the master in mathematics. Around 1900, this became a hindrance to the development of the mathematical level of information in the country, and to the actual diffusion of the ethos of research.