As I already said in another occasion, I think that many listmembers are
interested in pedagogical issues, and they are right to believe that
topics on this forum not only should be tied to scholarly research.
A few weeks ago, when I was trying (alas, with little success) to interest
members towards "historiography of mathematics", a friend told me (private
correspondence):
"as nobody seems to be interested in taking this matter up, let me
at least make a few private remarks. I do not know whether they
are worth to be made public; no doubt they would create quite an
uproar."
In substance, my correspondent disagrees completely with the current fad
that encourages teaching of the (so-called) History of Mathematics either
to undergraduates or to normal mathematics graduates when both his/her
general historical background and or intellectual maturity are below a
reasonable (whatever the term means) threshold:
"Of course, a lecturer should make the occasional historical
remark, and it should be well founded. But it is not possible to
acquire historical knowledge about the Renaissance authors without
reading Italian, about the Baroque authors without Latin, about
the 18th/19th century authors without French. And even for Peano
we also need latine sine flexione. Every translation is already
an interpretation. Second hand clothes may be acceptable; second
hand knowledge is not."
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Julio Gonzalez Cabillon