Timeline for First uses of the term "crackpottery" in mathematics [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 15, 2022 at 23:26 | history | closed |
Steven Landsburg Joseph Van Name Alex M. Gerald Edgar Timothy Chow |
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| Feb 15, 2022 at 17:56 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | There's some interesting historical information here about the related term "circle-squarer" which apparently goes back to ancient times. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 14:54 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | Wiktionary says that crackpot was originally crack-pate and pate is definitely an archaic word for head. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 12:35 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | I think the question belongs in hsm.stackexchange.com | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 11:29 | comment | added | Manfred Weis | @StefanKohl that's true, but I can't think up a nice translation of crackpottery to German that uses the same "image" of a cracked pot as a noun that could be used for cranky maths in German. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 10:37 | comment | added | Stefan Kohl♦ | @ManfredWeis The term exists quite literally in the same meaning also in (very colloquial!) German language -- einen Sprung in der Schüssel haben. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 10:18 | comment | added | Brendan McKay | Augustus de Morgan's 1872 book "A Budget of Paradoxes" refers to a persistent circle-squarer as a "crack man". I haven't heard that variation before. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 9:18 | comment | added | Jukka Kohonen | (But to clarify: Halmos not really referring to crackpottery in math, rather in engineering and physics.) | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 8:28 | comment | added | Jukka Kohonen | Not sure if it counts as a "math paper", but Paul Halmos mentioned crackpot inventors and crank experiments in his 1958 piece "Innovation in mathematics" in Scientific American. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 6:49 | comment | added | Manfred Weis | @BrendanMcKay that explanations further clarifies that it doesn't relate to pottery in a literal meaning. Thanks for elucidating that to the non native English speakers. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 5:35 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 15, 2022 at 23:27 | |||||
| Feb 15, 2022 at 5:21 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Feb 15, 2022 at 9:56 | |||||
| Feb 15, 2022 at 5:11 | comment | added | Brendan McKay | "Pot" is an old colloquialism for "head", so a "crackpot" is someone with a cracked head. There are plenty of examples from the 1800s. An older version, going back at least to the 16th century, is "crackbrain". None of this answers the mathematical question. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 4:48 | comment | added | Nik Weaver | I rather like this question, but yeah, it seems pretty far off topic. | |
| Feb 15, 2022 at 4:44 | history | asked | Manfred Weis | CC BY-SA 4.0 |