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Intellectual Mathematics
Personal blog · intellectualmathematics.com/blogmathhistoryphilosophy
Intellectual Mathematics is a personal blog at intellectualmathematics.com about math, history and philosophy. Since 2016, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Galileo Bad, Archimedes Good”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Viktor Blåsjö's blog on the history and teaching of maths, linked mainly for its Opinionated History of Mathematics podcast. Praised as incisive; others find its Galileo-dismissing tone off-putting.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Podcast Opinionated History of Mathematics podcast. Geometry Modern and classical, including history and philosophy. Manifesto on the Teaching of Mathematics Being a declaration of the principles on which these works are based. Intuitive Infinitesimal Calculus Being a textbook instantiating th
Most-linked posts?
- /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-07-30
- /blog/the-case-against-galileo-s01-overview/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-26
- Galileo Bad, Archimedes Good2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-14
What Hacker News says?
Reminds me of the Galileo podcast series in the Opinionated History of Mathematics by Viktor Blasjo: https://intellectualmathematics.com/opinionated-history-of-m...
Comment linking /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/
on “Facts don't change minds, structure does”Submitted Cultural reception of geometry in early modern Europe as a story · 61 points
HN discussionI took a look and was really turned off by the first episode which is all about dunking on Galileo and what a bad mathematician he was, and generally showing tremendous hostility to anything that isn't math. You can read it for yourself here: https://intellectualmathematics.com/blog/galileo-bad-archime... The syllogism appears to be: 1. All good science is mathematical 2. Anyone intelligent is very good at math 3. G…
Comment linking /blog/galileo-bad-archimedes-good/
on “History of Maths for Beginners”Submitted Galileo Bad, Archimedes Good as a story · 24 points
HN discussionI cannot recommend enough the podcast Opinionated History of Mathematics by Viktor Blåsjö What's great about it is that it helps put you in the shoes of the people solving the problems at these times. So it secretly teaches you how to solve problems. He also attacks some of the claims of some historians which are a bit obtuse. The arguments are really well founded and if you're wondering how ancients solved extremel…
Comment linking /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/
on “History of Maths for Beginners”Submitted Torricelli's trumpet is not counterintuitive as a story · 4 points
HN discussionPerhaps this was essentially Thales's own proof: https://intellectualmathematics.com/blog/first-proofs-thales... BTW it's also quite direct using vectors: the legs of the triangle are the sum and difference of radius vectors. Take their dot product, distribute it, it's zero because radii are the same length.
Comment linking /blog/first-proofs-thales-and-the-beginnings-of-geometry/
on “A seventh-grader student found a beautiful proof to Thales' Theorem (2002)”Submitted The disastrous implicit message of “intro to proof” courses as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTo change your mind, what would I need to demonstrate? I'm providing third party sources, I have personal experience, I can quote from the original source. What is missing that results in being unconvincing? I want to make sure, there are ways to change your opinion, right? I really encourage you to read that wiki page. | The quantum theory of the Lamb shift, as conceived by Bethe and established by Schwinger, is a…
Comment linking /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/
on “Beyond Semantics: Unreasonable Effectiveness of Reasonless Intermediate Tokens”Submitted Manifesto on the Teaching of Mathematics as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIndeed -- for a more detailed, incisive, and entertaining take, check out Season 1 of the "Opinionated History of Mathematics" podcast by Viktor Blåsjö https://intellectualmathematics.com/blog/the-case-against-ga...
Comment linking /blog/the-case-against-galileo-s01-overview/
on “A video tour of the Standard Model (2021)”Submitted “Repugnant to the nature of a straight line”: Non-Euclidean geometry as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Doesn't this then support the claim that LLMs aren't building world models There's actually no strong evidence that LLMs, or any AI system, is actually building a world model. These systems are determined to have "world model" capabilities based on benchmarks, but benchmarks will never be able to tell you if such a feat is taking place. How people are claiming that these have world models is by testing them for co…
Comment linking /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/
on “How to inject knowledge efficiently? Knowledge infusion scaling law for LLMs”Submitted “Let it have been drawn”: the role of diagrams in geometry as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think you're right. There's a lot of comments I've responded to and the alignment isn't always clear who's responding to what, so I use context to fill in the gap. My bad. You are totally right about your comment making more sense haha. (I'm known to be an idiot, so people should question if you really want me reviewing your papers lol) But as your last line is suggesting, I think this is just a human thing and wh…
Comment linking /opinionated-history-of-mathematics/
on “Argonne National Lab is attempting to replicate LK-99”Submitted The case against Galileo on the law of fall as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDepends what you're looking for. Full Frontal Calculus[0], Intuitive Infinitesimal Calculus[1], and Elementary Calculus[2] are all textbooks on the calculus sequence using an infinitesimal pov. The basic approach is to extend the Real numbers to include infinitesimals (greater than zero but smaller than every positive real number) and transfinites (greater than every positive real number), collectively called the Hy…
Comment linking /calculus/
on “Simplifying and Refactoring Introductory Calculus”Submitted Four Types of Mathematicians as a story · 2 points
HN discussion1. I do not think Galileo is either a characteristic example of a physicist or mathematician, or a particularly good example at all [1]. 2. While I would say that most would trivially agree that mathematics is a form of language [2], it is less common to argue that mathematics is _just that_. And, crucially, it is not supported by neuroscience [3]. It seems that there are distinct brain areas involved specifically i…
Comment linking /blog/the-case-against-galileo-s01-overview/
on “Is math real?”Submitted Why lectures do not work as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI do definitely agree that something is lacking in current mathematical education, but calling your own counter-program "intellectual mathematics" is a bit ... on the nose. Judging from the rest of the website, the author appears to have some rather idiosyncratic opinions. For example, he seems to be unconvinced that rigour is an essential component of mathematics (even going as far as claiming not to understand wha…
Comment linking /blog/four-types-of-mathematicians/
on “Manifesto on the Teaching of Mathematics”Submitted Manifesto on the Teaching of Mathematics as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learn Calculus Like Huygens as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learn calculus like Huygens (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
