Gert Schubring is a retired member of the Institut für Didaktik der Mathematik, a research institute at Bielefeld University, and at present is visiting professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). His research interests focus on the history of mathematics and the sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their systemic interrelation with social-cultural systems. One of his specializations is history of mathematics education. He has published several books, among which is Conflicts between Generalization, Rigor and Intuition: Number Concepts Underlying the Development of Analysis in 17th–19th Century France and Germany (New York, 2005).

• Introduction.-  1.Foundations of mathematics buried in school garbage (Southern Mesopotamia, early second millennium BCE).- 2. From the practice of explanation to the ideology of demonstration: an informal essay.- 3.Catholicism and Mathematics in the Early Modernity.- 4.“Je n’ai point ambitionnée d’être neuf”: Modern Geometry in Early Nineteenth-Century French Textbooks.- 5.The impact of teaching mathematics upon the development of mathematical practices.- 6.A Multiple Perspective Approach to History of Mathematics: Mathematical programming and Rashevsky’s early development of mathematical biology in the 20th century.- 7.Teaching as an indicator of mathematical practices.