> Ivor Grattan-Guinness, in his recent "History of the Mathematical Sciences",
> states:
>
> "The study of philomaths is rather new in the history of
> mathematics, which is our concern here as an activity.
> One might expect that mathematicians' interest in history
> would be deep, for their subject has shown long continuous
> concerns; after all, all the ancient roots are still with
> us. However, mathematicians often treat history with
> contempt...
I am amazed at this statement, which has not even a grain of truth
in it that I know of. Every mathematician is first of all cognizant of
the *recent* history of whatever problem he is concerned with, since
that's where his problem came from and is the literature he must naturally
cite. Clearly there can be no point beyond which the knowledge of such
origins, or the efforts of those predecessors, becomes contemptible.
So far reasoning takes me. Experience? I have known a good
number of practicing mathematicians in my time, some of them quite
distinguished and most of them run of the mill as one might expect, and
while their knowledge of the history of mathematics, and interest in it
beyond their own fields of study, is often not deep, none of them has ever
exhibited contempt, for either the history or its study, in my presence at
least.
I wonder why Grattan-Guinness made such a statement. Perhaps he
really meant something else, something associated with the idea that
mathematics stands on its own philosophical foundations and in principle
does not use experience (i.e. history) for its validation.
Ralph A. Raimi Tel. 716 275 4429 or (home) 716 244 9368
Dept. of Mathematics FAX 716 244 6631
University of Rochester Webpage http://www.math.rochester.edu/u/rarm
Rochester, NY 14627 (Webpage contains links to papers)