Timelessness of the classics

Most of you who read this weblog know that one of my primary preoccupations is how to invest my marginal time in terms of reading to optimize whatever it is I want to optimize (i.e., to "know stuff"). Life is short. So I recently began reflecting on the choices I make in terms of reading "classics," and how great thinkers of the past are remembered. Euclid's Elements for example is still relevant today. Arguably the most successful textbook in the history of the world its usage is obviated by the integration of many of its insights into mathematics as a whole. I know many people who go to the Dover Books website and stock up on a host of out of date texts on math...but the reality is that with math nothing is every really "out of date" unless you're a mathematician or mathematical physicist. Most modern biologists have little fluency with math beyond calculus, a technique deriving from the period of the late 17th century. A given field of math may not be useful to you, but it is not wrong as such because of the passage of time. In fields outside math it is more complex because there is no universal standard such as proof. When it comes to the literature it seems that timelessness still holds. The Iliad, The Bible and Pride and Prejudice can "speak" to us. In fact, their relative antiquity is not a necessary mark against them, their persistence indicates either their cultural significance or their genuine quality (or both). Of course the arts are subject to fashions, e.g., in From Dawn to Decadence Jacques Barzun notes that the acclamation of Shakespeare as The Greatest is a phenomenon of the last two centuries, prior to which he was not considered of particular exception among the constellation of Tudor era dramatists. But the very fact that the works of Shakespeare were preserved are a testament to their quality on some level. Though one might admit that on the margins the rank order of the Greatness of any given piece of antique literature is subject to whim (stochasticity), the sample space is constrained by the fact that it takes time and energy to copy texts or print books. Humans have general aesthetic preferences, likely derived from our biological propensities, and these parameters will " load the die" in terms of the character of the works of art we produce and preserve. It is in the gray lands between mathematics and art where age is the enemy. During his life David Hume was most well known as a writer of history. But today his The History of Great Britain is a biographical footnote. Immanuel Kant made some non-trivial contributions to planetary science early on in his life. In fact, his promotion of the Nebular Hypothesis seems far less off the mark than theories such as that of the aether which emerged in subsequent centuries. Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is of historical interest, but not necessarily interesting as a history. Similarly, my own inclination is that Charles' Darwin's The Origin of Species has had its Big Ideas integrated into the framework of evolutionary biology to the point where I haven't read it more than once. On the other hand, I have read The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, because I believe that R. A. Fisher's deductive insights still have some juice left in them. This is not to say that I agree with Fisher on everything; in fact, I agree less with his general stance now then I did after the first reading of his work. But like mathematics Fisher's work has a clarifying effect on my own thinking. Science proceeds through the elaboration and refinement of theoretical frameworks in synthesis with the empirical data. The roots of the superstructure are assumed, it is on the branches where the fresh fruit is. In a less theoretical enterprise such as history progress is simply a matter of increasing the sample space of data. We now know that the Etruscans were likely from Anatolia thanks to the techniques of genetic science; this is not a general theoretical insight, but the resolution of a specific point. Similarly, the emergence of cliometric analyses and more powerful archaeological techniques means that we have moved far past Gibbon's time in terms of understanding how Rome rose and fell. This does not mean that we understand it with the certitude and precision which we understood the heavens after Newton, but we know with more detail where Gibbon was wrong, and where he didn't know he was right. So there you have it. In math the rigorous nature of the discipline means that prior thought is of interest. In literature the power of stochasticity is dampened by the reality of a modal human nature; very few people prefer a depressing ending to an uplifting one all things controlled. On the other hand, in the natural sciences the relative lack of rigor compared to mathematics means that the past is often rendered irrelevant. The contingency of deductive inferences upon the sample space of data which we are aware of means that theories are discarded on a regular basis, and not all theories which attain widespread acceptance will be eternally integrated into the great body of science. Scientific contingency is provisional. In empirical humane fields such as history there is little theoretical insight, but rather the sharpening focus of our model of the epiphenomenal minutiae which characterized the past. One's interpretation and emphases may bias or alter one's overall general model, but the fact that the Sumerians preceded the Akkadians in ascendancy in ancient Mesopatamia is a fact. Before 1950 no one knew that the peoples of Bronze Age Greece spoke the Greek language; after Michael Ventris translated the Linear B tablets we knew that they did, on the whole, use Greek (at least those who wrote down records). But there is a final group of disciplines whose status I am not totally clear on. The social sciences such as sociology and cultural anthropology seem exceeding faddish, the consensus at any given time reflecting the Zeitgeist of the society than reality as such. Unlike history these fields are acquainted with theory, but I see quite often no close relationship between theory and a contingent network of ideas fed by facts. Theory seems to be an arcane language utilized in the service of rhetorical combat. An older field which is subject to similar problems seems to be philosophy. The math of Renee Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz is still valid, but who reads their philosophy except philosophers and college students? Do Plato and Aristotle still hold up philosophically, or are they simply the necessary background pieces in any reasonable model of a history of ideas? Should Nietzsche be read as philosophy, or as literature? And is there any difference at the end of the day? Today we read The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius to gain insight into a great man's mind and his period, not to acquire deep philosophical wisdom. If I had to bet 50 years from now I would be willing to hazard that the key interest in Postcolonial Theory from scholar will be to shed light on the outlooks of the "smart set" as opposed to the putative substance which the smart set were engaging.