[allturtles]

> Do you not think it is true that some peoples' stories get embellished? Do you not think it is true that some are greatly so? Do you not think history gets retold to make better stories? Do you not think people who have made great contributions have been ignored? Certainly in the long history all this has happened. Do they not deserve credit? If they do, then the unfortunate reality is that this must be "taken" from those that it was misattributed to.

I'm really not particularly interested in history as a process of attributing credit. Galileo was hugely influential, whether that influence is 'deserved' or not, I mean, I don't care I guess? It's sort of like pointing out that vikings visited North America long before Columbus. Okay, but so what? They went there, then left or died, and had no influence on the course of history. I also don't see why making fun of his mathematical abilities somehow redresses the "harm" of his unfair reputation, since everyone involved is very long dead.

> The issue comes down to this: Do great minds think alike? I say they do. I say there is a spiritual unity of scientific thought from ancient to modern times. I say that what is obvious to us was obvious to the Greeks. I say it is ludicrous to think that generations of Greek mathematical geniuses of the first order, with their extensively documented interest science, all somehow failed to conceive basic principles of scientific method. I say these things because I can feel it in my bones. I say these things because I have spent my life in mathematics departments and experienced so many times the profound sense of thinking exactly alike with another person. Young or old, student or professor, when we talk about mathematics our minds are one. Mathematics has this power, to make brethren of us all.

The author claims that mathematicians form a trans-historical class of superior minds, and there was no scientific revolution because mathematicians were already doing all the things that historians claim emerged in the scientific revolution. This view has a huge historical problem with explaining why these genius mathematicians came up with almost no interesting new ideas in physics from ca. 200 BC to ca. 1600 AD.