MA177, Fall 97---Library Assignment 2

Periodical Literature

The goal of this assignment is to acquaint you with the periodical literature on the history of mathematics in the eighteenth century and with methods for locating interesting articles. The assignment seems simple: you are to locate, read, and summarize four journal articles on the history of mathematics in the eighteenth century. I strongly suggest that you choose articles that relate to your term paper topic: this will both deepen your term paper and will make this assignment more interesting. (Don't forget that your ``research proposal'' specifying your term paper topic is due October 17.) Note carefully that:

• The articles are to be from scholarly journals in the area of history of science and mathematics or from high-level expository journals. I list most of the relevant sources below. Articles from popular periodicals or from we world wide web are not acceptable. If you are in doubt, check with me.

• The articles are to be on the history of mathematics in the eighteenth century. Feel free to interpret ``mathematics'' as broadly as it was interpreted in the eighteenth century, but do not choose articles on science in general, on the experimental sciences, or on other aspects of the history of the eighteenth century. Again, check with me if you have questions.

The first step is to locate four articles you want to read.

1. Our library carries a number of periodicals that contain articles on the history of mathematics.
   • Historia Mathematica deals exclusively with the history of mathematics. It's definitely worth a look

   • Isis is more general, dealing with the history of science, but there are articles on mathematics here too.

   • History of Science is similar to Isis, with perhaps a slightly larger emphasis on the social context of scientific work.

   • The Mathematical Association of America publishes three expository journals, all of which publish the occasional historical article: American Mathematical Monthly, Mathematics Magazine, and College Mathematics Journal. I have ordered them by decreasing level of sophistication.

   • The Mathematical Intelligencer also contains some historical articles.

2. Dauben's bibliography (on reserve in Olin) is a good source of references to interesting articles. Plus, there are other books similar to Dauben. Take a look at Grattan-Guinness' Companion Encyclopedia and at the Isis bibliographies. In connection to specific mathematicians, the bibliographies in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography are very useful. The back pages of every issue of Historia Mathematica contain lots of abstracts of articles on the history of mathematics, from all sorts of sources.

3. From the Colby library web page you can access a number of indices to the periodical literature. (Click on ``index and full text'' under ``Electronic Subscriptions,'' on the left-hand side of the main library page.) For us, the most useful index listed there is the ``History of Science and Technology'' periodical index. Colby also has a subscription to an index to all periodical literature in mathematics. ``MathSciNet'' is very powerful, but not very easy to use. It isn't yet on the library web page list of electronic indices, but you can reach it by pointing Netscape to http://e-math.ams.org:80/msnprhtml/review_search.html. In the case of ``MathSciNet'' it's useful to know that the ``Classification'' number for articles dealing with history of mathematics is 01. Feel free to ask me for help with either of these electronic indices.

4. If you find a reference to an article in a periodical which our library does not have (the most likely example is the Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences), you can still get a copy of the article via inter-library loan. Talk to the reference librarian for instructions. ILL takes a few days, so don't leave this for the last minute.

5. Finally, citations in one article can lead you to others. This could be the most fun.

One restriction: your articles should not all come from the same journal. If possible, choose articles from four different journals.

Once you've chosen four articles, read them as carefully as you can. Feel free to come to me to discuss your articles, to ask for explanations, or to ask for suggestions for further reading. You should aim for real understanding here, and not just for a cursory acquaintance with the article's main ideas.

For each article you read, prepare a short one-page summary. This should begin by giving the full bibliographic data for your article. Then you should state the central thesis of the paper, summarize the supporting evidence and arguments, and comment on any particularly interesting aspects. Feel free to be evaluative in your summary of the article, but not at the expense of preparing a useful summary of the content.

If you choose your articles well, this assignment can be lots of fun! Your summaries are due on Friday, October 31. Good luck!