Salomon Bochner as historian of mathematics and science (Q1264132)

The present paper was originally written for a commemorative volume, which, however, came to nothing. In spite of this root, its substance is as far from that sort of obligatory hagiography which is too easily produced on such occasions as it is from dry listing of factualities. Instead, the essay conveys an expressively sympathetic and almost poetic yet critical image of Salomon Bochner's conception of and thematic approach to history, including the history of mathematics and science, best to be represented by select quotations: Bochner's ``historical sensibility was formed, not at bottom by the mathematics he practiced, but by the philological tradition out of which he explored its reaches in civilization'', ``yet, we cannot make of Bochner a historian's scientist- historian, treating science in relation to its own time and context rather than as a function of its future''. Bochner's was ``the historiography of Hegel, of the Germanic personification of abstractions''. The ``successive of mind-sets of the Zeitgeist'' are ``not explained, they are recognized. They come about `somehow', another favorite word, which Bochner somehow managed to employ with particular precision''. At the ``overt level, the findings of Bochner [...] contain few surprises. The merit and originality of his discussion lie instead in many shrewd remarks in passing''. In general, ``Bochner's historical writings are more rewarding for their asides, their irreverences, their glancing observations, than for their arguments, which are too fragmentary, introspective, and elliptical to be often persuasive''. [The author of the essay does] not mean that as anything but a high compliment. Professional life is stuffed with colleagues ever at our elbows trying to convince us''. In the end, a bibliography of Bochner's historical writings is given.