The Annales de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées was the first major periodical publication in the word devoted to mathematics. It was published in France by Joseph Diez Gergonne from 1810 to 1832. It was recently digitalizated, thus such researchers and teachers in mathematics or philosophy of science now have open access to it. Working on such a document required from us to study it from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Thanks to this work, we were able to use passages from this journal in mathematics lectures at undergraduate university level, and in epistemology and history of science lectures for postgraduate students.

This article aims at:

1. Showing the various stages from the study of the original document under all its aspects (mathematics, epistemology, didactics, etc.) up to its digitalisation and availability in free access.

2. Illustrating with significant examples the didactic interest of the document and its use in courses on the emergence of the concept of vector and the geometrical representation of complex numbers, the evolution of differential calculus – then dealing with the problem of the validity of the concepts of the infinitely small or that of limits -, the study of an Argand’s demonstration of the fundamental theorem of algebra.

3. Connecting in a multidisciplinary approach during seminars of epistemology, as above mentioned, mathematics, general philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics. The document is often of interest in its philosophical aspects: we can see here confronted metaphysics, sensualism and positivism, geometrical realism and idealism or nominalism, etc.

The use of original texts will constitute the link between the three steps of this demonstration. We will underline the advantages that can be drawn from such original publications, both at the didactical and multidisciplinary levels.