User talk:Msh210/Archive/The Words of Mathematics

The Words of Mathematics: An Etymological Dictionary of Mathematical Terms Used in English
Had you seen this 1994 work ? It seems useful in explaining the nature of the metaphors underlying mathematical senses of common terms. DCDuring TALK 19:54, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No; thanks for the pointer. It's published by the MAA, so should be reputable; OTOH the MAA is math (and math pedagogy) experts, not etymology experts, so who knows. I've never heard of the author or the book, and there's no review of it in MathSciNet. I can get a copy from a local library, but don't know whether I should use it as a source. You think? &#x200b;—msh210℠ 20:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * For etymology per se, I would think we have plentiful sources for most of the components of mathematical terms. It is mostly for the sense development, the metaphor, especially in an area that you were not too familiar with. I borrowed it from my local library, but I am unlikely to be the right person for the job, whereas you are. DCDuring TALK 21:48, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The most interesting aspect of sense development is probably the date of first use, which this book — I've borrowed it now — lacks for most entries. (Really, what else is there to say about, for example, snowflake curve, other than that it comes from snowflake and was coined by someone at some point?) But I'll see what I can do. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 14:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've looked at the book. for most words, the book gives the original root in Latin or wherever, with no indication of how it came to English. This is, as you mention above, better covered elsewhere. It often explains why a, for example, sheaf (mathematical object) is called that (because it resembles in some way a sheaf (real-world object)), but I think that for the most part these are pretty obvious, and, in any event, they are uninteresting to me, so I don't want to copy the information over, though I'll grant that it is suitable info for enwikt and someone may wish to do so. What it does not explain, which is most interesting to me personally, are two things: (1) when a word was first used in its mathematical sense. (2) Often, a word was used in French or German in a mathematical sense as an extension of the standard French or German word, and then the English term was calqued/borrowed from the French or German to acquire its math sense. I suspect that that happened with differentiation, for example. It would be nice to have such indication in an etymology, but this book makes no mention of such things, instead saying things like "Leibniz was the first to use this term" (in fact Leibniz did not write in English). So I'll not be using the book as an enwikt source. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 16:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with your assessment. I was a bit disappointed in the shallowness. It seems more useful as a checklist of basic terms and a quick source for etymology-section starter information than anything else. The kind of information that you seek is fairly elusive for many terms. Do you think there is any single source that has such information for more than a handful of math terms? DCDuring TALK 22:20, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any, but I wouldn't necessarily if there were such. Sometimes, at least for newer terms, research can be done online to discover who was the first to use a term in print. For example, [[w:Casson handle]] claims that a certain 1982 paper was the first to use Casson handle, and that information is probably findable by researching the relevant papers, all of which are probably on MathSciNet. But that's term by term, not the single source for many terms that you mention. I'll do so for any term that interests me (and feel free to ask me to do so for any term that interests you), if it's in a field where I'll be able to identify the relevant papers. But I certainly won't do so en masse. (Incidentally, the way math collaboration works, likely the term was used for a while, years possibly, before that 1982 paper was published, possibly even in non-durably-archived print (on blackboards and in handwritten notes of talks) and possibly, even, was not invented by the paper's author at all.) &#x200b;—msh210℠ 15:42, 12 October 2010 (UTC)