Re-reading Archimedes Codex

I am re-reading The Archimedes Codex. It is fabulous. A detective story of history, science, and math. (I wrote my first review of it two years ago.)

Both authors have a sweet nerdy guy sense of humor, gently self-deprecating, piercing when it should be.

"What are readers today [of science] afraid of? They are afraid of equations. With good reason: they were force-fed such equations for several, terrible years of their childhood and adolescence." 

I actually think he (Netz) is wrong here. I love math, and I love the beauty of some equations, but equations are still intimidating when you don't yet see what they're saying.

Here's another math-related quote, pointing in a different direction:

"Archimedes wrote out this problem in verse! A poet-mathematician! - the thought seems to us absurd, but it was natural for Archimedes, whose entire science was built on a sense of play and beauty, on hidden meanings."

Not surprisingly, I disagree with him here too. Some of us like mixing poetry and math. And the problem written up this way was a silly one. Archimedes was kind of like Martin Gardner with a few of his problems, and it makes sense he'd be playful in his presentation of it. Kind of like this one by Mike Shenk (sorry for the xmas reference this early).