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points by wahern 4 days ago | 0 comments

University provides you the opportunity to research and understand the history. You don't need university for that, but the time, people, and resources available to you make it much easier.

But it's voluntary. Actually course curricula basically just drop hints at the history as part of a short perfunctory narrative. Along with the deeper conceptual instruction (framed according to the then-current beliefs), that's better than vocational instruction, but definitely falls short of the idealized liberal education. Ideally you survey the entire historical progression of a field, like St John's College does where, e.g., you start learning geometry by reading Pythagoras, or calculus by reading Newton, and then having vigorous discussion to suss how how thinking changed or didn't change between eras and how that might inform today's thinking. Not sure how much marginal benefit is had by going all-in like that, though, as a practical matter, except for very serious students.

[–] 1718627440 3 days ago

Of course there is always a depth below, which to explore is entirely voluntary. But university courses don't train you directly on the layer you are going to solve the actual problems on your job, they test always at least on layer deeper and then maybe test for one specific algorithm/approach/problem as an example.

> you start learning geometry by reading Pythagoras, or calculus by reading Newton

You can do that, if you actually care about the history of mathematics, but normally it's enough if someone introduces you to a combined theory of e.g. Pythagoras and Newton.

So in a way you are saying, university is often not actually teaching temporal genesis, which I agree with, but my point is that it does teach causal genesis, with citations on the temporal aspect.