I am the one who has taught according this anonymous quote the
"second-hand" history of mathematics for about 20 years. Nobody was
teaching me the history of mathematics when I was in the university. (I
graduated from the University of Latvia). On my senior year I was also a
math teacher in the middle school and had 7th graders who hated math. So I
had to do something and I started for looking up stories about history of
mathematics and connected problems with that. First story I told them was
about Archimedes and it was in fall. For my great surprise it was already
spring and close to the end of school year when once a guy came to me and
said - I am still thinking what kind of idiots where those Romans who
killed Archimedes. He remembered a story I by that time had already
forgotten I told them! So when the head of my math department in university
asked me what I would suggest would be a good course to include in a new
curriculum for prospective teachers, I immediately suggested history of
mathematics - because I knew how much I lacked knowledge about it and how
much time I was spending to finding facts on myself without any previous
experience. Then he said - OK, you can have this class and teach it. So I
did it for 20 years there and now already twice in Cornell.
Julio, your friend is correct - students taking this course do not know
history, do not know Italian, French, Latin, Greek. But I have always felt
a satisfaction that after this course when we are jumping through history
of mathematics they are like going through history of culture also.And
that is what they always has reported to me as the best thing they are
getting from this class. They had a lot of math classes but they needed
history of math to understand how those different math topics intertwine
and who did it. History of mathematics is not only about mathematics - it
is about mathematicians, it is something which makes mathematics alive, it
gives human faces to those brilliant results and genius proofs
mathematicians care so much about.
I am always telling my students - I can not teach you history of mathematics,
I can only show you the way how you can study things you are interested in.
I am finding new things every year I teach this course and am fascinating
about that. But I have a feeling with every year more and more that I know
very little in history of mathematics. I have to admit that I am not a
researcher in this field. It is more like my hobby. I am very happy when my
students are telling me that reading in history of mathematics encouraged
them to study deeper some topics of mathematics or they finally understood
that mathematics is not a continuous chain of success but there is drama
and tragedies may be even more then anywhere else.
Second hand clothes are a great help for people who has nothing, that can
be a starting point to continue to believe that once there will be a time
they will afford buying clothes in a department store. You can turn up your
nose to second hand clothes if you are wealthy enough, but when you are in
need you will be happy for them. With my experience I can say the same
thing about teaching history of mathematics and popularization of
mathematics among so many math threatened students.
With best regards,
Daina Taimina
> 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."
>
> Reactions?...
>
> Julio Gonzalez Cabillon
>