Titles discussed
Abstract
AbstractThis essay seeks to clarify the role played by poetic license in the triangular
relationship involving mathematics, the history of mathematics, and mathematics in
fiction. This relationship can be analyzed, in the first place, from the perspective
offered by the well-known Aristotelian distinction between “history” and “poetry.”
It can also be analyzed from the point of view of the kind of language typically used
in texts produced in each of these realms, or, alternatively, from the point of view
of the nature of their expected audiences. It will be seen, however, that the most
illuminating perspective for this analysis is the one related to the kind of attitude
that is expected from the reader in each case, whether critical or based on a suspension
of disbelief. To the considerations that pertain to this latter perspective when it
comes to texts of any kind, the peculiarities of mathematical texts add some unique
twists.