"I am struggling to think who would want to read this book"
David Bessis
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"I am struggling to think who would want to read this book"<br>The reader report that could have killed my book, and proved it right
David Bessis<br>Mar 20, 2025
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Dear David,<br>Hello again!<br>We have now received three reader reports for the English language edition of Mathematica/Secret Math. I am attaching all three for your consideration.<br>The first report is what I would characterize as ambivalent/not very helpful. I think that reader wants a different kind of book and does not consider himself a target reader for it. The second and third reports are supportive, and the two readers “get” what your goals are for the book.
I opened this email from my editor, Jean, and my heart sank. Something was wrong but I couldn’t tell what.<br>A report that was “ambivalent/not very helpful”? What could it possibly mean?<br>I jumped to the attachments and found the first reader report. It took me about 10 seconds to scan through it. The report wasn’t “ambivalent/not very helpful”. It was nuclear.<br>The worst part was this horrible passage in the concluding paragraph:<br>I am struggling to think who would want to read this book […] Should Yale University Press publish this? That’s a tough call for me.
In reader report parlance, the passage is far less ambivalent than it purports to be. It functions as a “kiss of death” that annihilates all prior positive words from the reviewer.<br>It’s like a reference call at the end of a hiring process, where a former employer would say something like this: “David has many qualities and there are many reasons to like him. But I’m struggling to think who would want to work with him. Should you hire him? That’s a tough call for me.”<br>Long story short, we overcame this stressful moment. Jean was persistent enough and luck was on our side. Had one of the other two reports been slightly less enthusiastic, it would have been a completely different scenario.<br>The book ended up being published and Yale University Press found out that there are quite a number of people who “want to read it”.
However, I’ve continued to think a lot about this report, which correctly anticipated the central themes of the online debate around my book.<br>This negative report is the perfect entry point to this Substack and to the themes that I will be discussing in the coming months.<br>I have no idea who this reviewer might be—Jean’s email only leaked that he’s a “he”—and I am not interested in finding out. I hold no grudge. Reader X, as I'll call this anonymous mathematician, was obviously sincere in his assessment. What’s most interesting is what he liked and disliked:<br>The central theme of this book is one with which I half-heartedly agree.
The agree part is this: The formal language in which mathematics is written is essential, but it obscures how mathematicians create their art.
Where I disagree with the author is his rejection of the role of innate talent. When I was younger I could play the piano, but I was no musician. I certainly practiced.
It’s a pity that the author takes an (my opinion) extreme view against any notion of innate ability.
It’s a pity because it dilutes the important message of this book: There are ways to think about mathematics based on intuition and those ways can (should!) be nurtured as part of mathematics education.
Reader X thinks that my criticism of hereditarian myths is a useless distraction from the valuable part of my project. I think the exact opposite: that his unscientific views on the origin of mathematical talent prevent him from seeing the bigger picture and understanding my core message about mathematics itself.<br>Yet Reader X is factually correct on one thing: the heritability debate is indeed a distraction from the important debate on the nature of mathematics.<br>I just think that this is unavoidable. The math genius myth is an essential component of our millennial misconceptions on mathematics and human cognition, and a major obstacle to their resolution.<br>This is why I chose to confront the problem head on and open my book with this famous Einstein quote:<br>I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
The quote serves as a leitmotif throughout the book, alongside strikingly similar quotes by René Descartes and Alexander Grothendieck. We collectively refuse to take these great geniuses seriously when they deny that their talent is innate, and this attitude has a major side-effect: we also refuse to learn from them.<br>A joke in bad taste
When Einstein talks about curiosity, he’s not picking a random word. He's not trying to be polite, or modest, or politically correct. He is simply attempting to articulate his unusual mental posture, a cognitive attitude that is extremely difficult to convey with words, but is nevertheless learnable and, to a certain extent, coachable—if only we care to listen.<br>Reader X thinks he knows better than Albert Einstein. He offers this...