Colin McLarty thinks that the distinction between "What happened in the
past?" and "How did we get here?" is attractive but unworkable. Permit
me to describe the history of mathematics program offered here at
California State University, Northridge.
We offer two courses: an undergraduate course for future teachers of
secondary school mathematics. This is clearly a course that answers the
question, "What happened in the past?" The purpose of the course is to
equip future teachers with the ideas and tools of yesteryear so that they
can enliven their classes of today. The course begins with the history
of arithmetic operations, overviews thenumber words and operations of
Native Americans (particuarly the California Indians), investigates the
mathematics of the Babylonians, ancient Chinese, etc.,etc., up through
the early development of The Calculus by N and L.
The graduate courses answers the second question, "How did we get here?"
This year the instructor is focusing only on The Calculus. Hence, there
is no need to investigate the history of computation or analyze the words
Native Americans used to express numbers and operations.
The distinction is quite useful.
Pax et Bonum!
Barnabas Hughes