Textual materiality and abstraction in mathematics.

In this paper, we wish to explore the role that textual representations play in the creation of new mathematical objects. We do so by analyzing texts by Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) and Évariste Galois (1811-1832), which are seen as central to the historical development of the mathematical concept of groups. In our analysis, we consider how the material features of representations relate to the changes in conceptualization that we see in the texts.