一个数学家的辩白 英文版.doc

A Mathematician’s Apology G. H. Hardy First Published November 1940 As fifty or more years have passed since the death of the author, this book is now in the public domain in the Dominion of Canada. First Electronic Edition, Version 1.0 March 2005. Published by the University of Alberta Mathematical Sciences Society Available on the World Wide Web at http://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/ To JOHN LOMAS who asked me to write it Preface I am indebted for many valuable criticisms to Professor C. D. Broad and Dr C. P. Snow, each of whom read my original manuscript. I have incorporated the substance of nearly all of their suggestions in my text, and have so removed a good many crudities and obscurities. In one case, I have dealt with them differently. My §28 is based on a short article which I contributed to Eureka (the journal of the Cambridge Archimedean Society) early in the year, and I found it impossible to remodel what I had written so recently and with so much care. Also, if I had tried to meet such important criticisms seriously, I should have had to expand this section so much as to destroy the whole balance of my essay. I have therefore left it unaltered, but have added a short statement of the chief points made by my critics in a note at the end. G. H. H. 18 July 1940 1 It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. I can remember arguing this point once in one of the few serious conversations that I ever had with Housman. H