François Blondel and the Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d'architecture (1673)

Few of the figures active in both architecture and early modern science have left us accounts intended to elucidate the relationship between these two fields. As a result, we still lack an actor's understanding of the categories involved. François Blondel's 1673 treatise Résolution des quatre principaux problèmes d'architecture provides just such a description. The book deals with concrete problems of the kind encountered regularly in architectural practice and seeks to solve them in light both of the history of mathematics and of contemporary research in that field. Most importantly, it suggests a social context for the way in which architects actually saw "scientists" and vice versa.