Re: [HM] historiography of mathematics
Gordon Fisher (gfisher@shentel.net)
Fri, 26 Feb 1999 00:27:57
A professor of history (specializing in history of science) once remarked
to me that if an historian got only about 20% of his facts wrong, he or she
was doing good. So maybe we should rank historians of mathematics by the
percentage of facts he or she gets wrong? Maybe also by how much he or she
copies from other historians of mathematics without giving credit or even
bothering to disguise the copying so it would be hard to trace? How could
we quantify this sort of thing? Can historians of mathematics (or of
anything else) be rank ordered, i.e. ranked on a linear scale? Or would
some kind of multivariate analysis be preferable? For example, should we
and if so how much should we weigh entertaining writing, inspiring writing,
factual accuracy, use of primary sources, comprehensiveness for a given
period or given branch of mathematics or some other such specialization,
scope in time, scope in geographically or politically determined locations,
how much for mathematical depth, how much for mathematical breadth, etc.?
Or would trying to quantify evaluations of historians of mathematics just
ruin a discussion of the historiography of mathematics?
Gordon Fisher gfisher@shentel.net