Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 27, 2026

A Methodology for Capturing Joint Visual Attention Using Mobile Eye-Trackers
Published on: January 18, 2020
AfterMath: the work of proof in the age of human-machine collaboration
1Department of the History of Science, Science Center 371, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract:
During the 1970s and 1980s, a team of Automated Theorem Proving researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago developed the Automated Reasoning Assistant, or AURA, to assist human users in the search for mathematical proofs. The resulting hybrid humans+AURA system developed the capacity to make novel contributions to pure mathematics by very untraditional means. This essay traces how these unconventional contributions were made and made possible through negotiations between the humans and the AURA at Argonne and the transformation in mathematical intuition they produced. At play in these negotiations were experimental practices, nonhumans, and nonmathematical modes of knowing. This story invites an earnest engagement between historians of mathematics and scholars in the history of science and science studies interested in experimental practice, material culture, and the roles of nonhumans in knowledge making.
Related Concept Videos
Proofreading
Proofreading
Errors During Replication are Corrected by the DNA Polymerase Enzyme
Proofreading
Machines: Problem Solving II
Social Foundations of Self IV: Self in Digital Communication
Machines: Problem Solving I
The toggle clamp system is a machine structure consisting of movable, pin-connected multi-force members that form a stabilized system to transmit forces. The...