The fact that two people can read about the same person and end up with completely different views makes me wonder how insightful reading about the history of science is.
Reading one of the articles on the site, I get the sense this guy has an axe to grind against Galileo. If I had to guess at my opinion after reading further, it would be that he’s using asymmetric standards of evidence for arguments for/against the value of Galileo’s work.
That might be true! Maybe my main takeaway from those articles is that to be a good math/science historian, you have to be good at history (by reading a bunch of primary sources) and good at math/science (like be able to solve concrete problems), and that there are a bunch of people who only know one of the things, and only a few that know both.
It’s interesting that some of the biggest figures of the past, like Galileo, are either praised or criticized. Here is a brutal take down of Galileo: https://intellectualmathematics.com/blog/the-case-against-galileo-s01-overview/, that at least seems to be well documented.
The fact that two people can read about the same person and end up with completely different views makes me wonder how insightful reading about the history of science is.
Reading one of the articles on the site, I get the sense this guy has an axe to grind against Galileo. If I had to guess at my opinion after reading further, it would be that he’s using asymmetric standards of evidence for arguments for/against the value of Galileo’s work.
That might be true! Maybe my main takeaway from those articles is that to be a good math/science historian, you have to be good at history (by reading a bunch of primary sources) and good at math/science (like be able to solve concrete problems), and that there are a bunch of people who only know one of the things, and only a few that know both.