Subject: Re: [HM] Mathematics in Literature
From: Ralph A. Raimi (rarm@math.rochester.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 10 2000 - 15:04:14 EDT
On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, John Truran wrote:
> The princess glanced up in dismay into her father's eyes glittering so
> close to her. The red patches on her face came and went, and it was plain
> that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her fear wold
> prevent her understanding any of her father's explanations, no matter how
> clear they might be. ...
>
> After one of these failures Bolkonsky observes "Mathematics are a most
> important subject, madam. And I don't want you to be like all the other
> silly women. Persevere and you will get to like it. Mathematics will
> drive all the nonsense out of your head."
>
> The "nonsense" was probably the princesses religious beliefs.
> It is all a sad tale, too often repeated today. Tolstoy is probably too
> generous is not ascribing all of the blame in this case to the teacher. But
> equally he is perceptive in seeing that a knowledge of mathematics could be
> liberating for women.
I don't believe this for a minute. Consider his "liberated" woman
Anna Karenina. He was perceptive here in that he correctly divined
*Bolkonsky's* desire to liberate women, but also having Bolkonsky
(inevitably?) taking the most extreme, unlikely, example of method, i.e.
teaching them mathematics, to show how futile it was to attempt to
liberate them by making them more like men.
But whatever Tolstoy had in mind in this direction was less
important than the fact that Tolstoy was an artist, and was able to
picture things in such a way that the truth comes through, even if it is
not exactly the philosophical lesson consciously intended by the artist
himself at the time. His picture of the terrified math student is from
life, with the terror doubled because the teacher is a father whom she
wants particularly to please. I doubt that Tolstoy had any idea he was
commenting on mathematical pedagogy as such, though now, a hundred or more
years later, we can draw a pedagogical lesson (if we wish) that has lain
buried in the words all this time.
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)
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