Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: Math history (including Euler's "breathtaking dexterity")

[mildred_of_midgard]

Quick note because I am way behind on salon and also ordering from archives:

(and this is the guy that Fritz thought was boring! But perhaps he didn't have much appreciation of math.)

Fritz was about as math-phobic as they come. He appreciated other people doing math, but it was something he struggled with personally. I would be *shocked* if he ever had any understanding of calculus.

Note: His father treated applied math as something that allowed you to predict, say, where your cannonballs would land, and thus very important for warfare, so Fritz did have some math forced down his throat in the period in which he was rebelling against his father. So that *might* have played a role in his dislike of doing math. But given his sponsoring of people like Maupertuis and Euler, I'm going to conclude that he was also just not very good at math. The same way he had German forced down his throat, but it also turned out that he wasn't linguistically gifted enough to pick up Italian or Latin or anything once he was on his own.

You just need to have taken (er, and retained) a beginning level university calculus course to read it.

Me: Well, I definitely took it... :P

As well as being interesting, this book is very well written! The author has a talent for presenting math in a clear and easily understandable way.

That reminds me, a book cahn and I loved that you might also really like: Seduced by Logic: Emilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville, and the Newtonian Revolution. It's 18th century relevant! Emilie is a salon favorite! And the author has a talent for presenting math in a clear and easily understandable way.

Re: Math history (including Euler's "breathtaking dexterity")

[luzula]

Ah, okay! So I guess Fritz recognized math as an important part of science which one might want to patronize, but was bad at it himself.

I'm sure you could read the book if you wanted, given that you have taken several years of math, but it seems you are busy with other things. : P

Thanks for the book rec, it does sound interesting!

Re: Math history (including Euler's "breathtaking dexterity")

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yes, exactly. Want to know what Fritz did really appreciate, and why he thought Euler was boring? Sparkling conversation, witty repartee. It was something his society valued, and he felt pressured to live up to the expectation himself. Voltaire was briiillllliant at this. Euler...not so much.

I'm sure you could read the book if you wanted, given that you have taken several years of math,

I took the several years of math! What I retained is another question. But I was able to follow your summary!

but it seems you are busy with other things. :P

Yes. Yes, you could say that. :P But if I'm ever looking for a book on this subject, I'll check out your rec.