A Regret from the Past--Explained--Second Essay

Thus, by the time I showed up at Brown in 1970 the Department of the History of Mathematics was reaching its zenith. The decade between 1971-1981 probably saw its scholars produce more works of erudition and insight into the history of mathematics than any other period of its history.

What the Department Did

In an interview shortly before his death in Nov. 2005, Professor Pingree, whose gift of his 25,000 volume library to Brown makes it probably one of the most significant book donations to the university in its history, explained what the department actually did. Rather than simply being an offshoot or adjunct in a history of science department, where attention was paid to a few significant figures in Western mathematics, Pingree's effort was dedicated to understanding the transmission of culture through the means of mathematics and the exact sciences. Thus, his twofold interest was to understand how someone from an Arabic speaking area, for example, would take the Greek texts/concepts and use them in his own world. How did math "look" once it had taken on the garb of another language and culture? In addition, he was skilled at "going backwards" from a text to the kind of thought that might have lain "behind" the text hundreds of years previously. By so doing, he was about to "fill in the gaps" in the transmission history of scholarship. In his person he exceeded what could be done, and is done, in a dozen history of science departments around the country.

David Pingree was probably the most learned individual on the Brown campus during my days there, especially as he emerged from the shadow of Neugebauer in the late 1970s (when I returned to Brown for doctoral work). So, these five men: Neugebauer, Sacks, Parker, Toomer, and Pingree walked the halls and walkways of Brown in the 1970s as colossuses, as people who were greeted with mixed looks of awe and lack of understanding. Why, some thought, should men of such brilliance and understanding dedicate their whole lives to the transmission of texts in cultures that themselves were long dead? (e.g., ancient Byzantium). But they did so.

I either met or knew of all of them except Parker in my time at Brown. Pingree's light manner and friendly visage almost invited people to come and see what he was doing. Toomer, on the other hand, always took his mid-morning walk with his two energetic and sometimes irritable Corgis nipping at his heels. Sachs was also a very welcoming professor, offering a course on ancient Assyria to spellbound students every other year. On one occasion when I talked with him he showed me his office and about 200 tablets that lay stacked around him. He said, "Well, this is my work for the rest of my life." Neugebauer, slowed by age during my time at Brown (1970-74; 77-80), was a sort of forbidding presence, a German professor transported to America with all the habits, demands, briliance and intolerance that one associated with German professors in those days. On one occasion I attended a public lecture on some aspect of the ancient world and sat behind him and his wife. A handout was given, with a chart which was not immediately easy to understand. I figured it out in a moment, however, but then heard Prof. Neugebauer speaking to his wife: "No, not this way. It goes that way!" He had turned the chart upside down from the way I had it. Sure enough, I was right and the insistent professor was wrong, but I chuckled to myself, realizing even at that age that once the bug of German professorship had bit someone, he was not really willing to listen to anyone, especially if he was wrong.

My Own Regret

Finally, after all these words, I get to my regret. Perhaps you can see it coming. Instead of taking any courses in History of Mathematics/Egyptology during either undergraduate or graduate days, I simply ignored the department. I think I knew that something very important was "brewing" there, but I didn't either have the encouragement, self-motivation or interest to pursue it. It would have been appropriate for me to do so. After all, I was a math major upon coming to Brown. I won awards in math in high school, and was happily pursuing it at Brown even though I didn't really understand why I was doing it. That is, I could do the calculations, for the most part, and follow the proofs, but I simply had no idea why anyone would want to do the things that came nicely to me. Then, in 1971, I began to take ancient Greek (I took some Latin in high school). Greek was on my agenda because of my interest in Biblical studies, but I think that a dual math/classical language interest could have been nurtured in the world of history of mathematics so that I might have had some focus in addition to biblical studies.

But as I said at the beginning of the previous essay, it was fear and pride that kept me from pursuing these interest. The fear? I heard that the guys in that department were sort of giants in the earth, and that they might have no tolerance for someone who didn't know everything. I heard they were so erudite and versatile that my paltry knowledge would not only be no match for theirs but would not even allow me to begin with them. I never mentioned my fears to anyone and never decided to try to face that fear--the fear perhaps of being exposed as completely ignorant of something that I might want to learn very well. Instead, I spent my time memorizing the Bible so that I could easily (and predictably) do well in the religious studies program. My fears got the better of me.

But my pride also didn't allow me to try out History of Mathematics/Egyptology. How so? Well, because I had adopted an Evangelical Christian approach to the world a few years previously, with a sense that I already had the answers to lots of life's difficult questions, I really didn't see the need to venture too far off from classic Christian texts to "nourish" me. I was looking to study as a means for exploration of faith, to get insights that I could use in my life or teach to others. In fact, I was looking to study as a means to enrich the feeling I had of the goodness of God and my sense of the reality of God's presence in life.

But as I have subsequently learned, my mind is only satisfied when it is mastering lots and lots of data and putting it in rich and wide-ranging historical contexts. Already in 1971 I knew I had that capacity and interest. But my eyes were closed by pride in faith and fear, and I never really ventured in the doorway of Wilbour Hall more than once or twice. If I had done so, my life may have been far different. I can't go down that road, of course, but every once in a while I think back at those days, when I was a stripling of 18 or 19, and think that I might, with a lot of work and dedicated effort, have been able to do the kinds of things that real historians of mathematics do. But, I can't. And, I may never be able to do so. Thus, I content myself with "lesser" things, the common and traditional things, the things such as learning new fields which many others understand, and clarifying concepts which may not be widely known but are known still by many.

Is it too late to dive into the complex wordls of cultural transmission in antiquity or the middle ages? I don't know, but I do know that if I do so, my langauge mastery has to be much more than it is now. I superficially appreciate the world now; I would need to long for a deeper knowledge. Maybe that is my mid-year resolution--to do all that I can to try to repair some of the loss of those years, to handle the regret in our own day. I don't think I would ever regret doing that.

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