Document Type
Article
Program
Mathematics (Pitzer)
Publication Date
11-1975
Keywords
Historian, Mathematician, History
Abstract
The historian's basic questions, whether he is a historian of mathematics or of political institutions, are: what was the past like? and how did the present come to be? The second question --how did the present come to be?-- is the central one in the history of mathematics, whether done by historian or mathematician. But the historian's view of both past and present is quite different from that of the mathematician. The historian is interested in the past in its full richness, and sees any present fact as conditioned by a complex chain of causes in an almost unlimited past. The mathematician instead is oriented toward the present, and toward past mathematics chiefly insofar as it led to important present mathematics.
Rights Information
© 1975 Academic Press, Inc. (Elsevier)
Terms of Use & License Information
DOI
10.1016/0315-0860(75)90101-9
Recommended Citation
Grabiner, Judith V. "The Mathematician, the Historian, and the History of Mathematics." Historia Mathematica 2.4 (November 1975): 439-447.
Comments
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0315086075901019