WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
It isn't necessary to go so far back. A large
part of the important
mathematics of the 1980s and 1990s does not appear in textbooks, or
does so only implicitly, because there is little incentive for
anyone to rewrite it.>>
This is a contradiction. If work on Number Theory were "important" than
surely my new book on Number Theory would include it.
If editors are solely referring to old notebooks, than that's their own
issue.
That doesn't prevent the rest of us, from using only the newest textbooks if
we so choose.
The very definition of "important" is, that many people cite it.
If no one cites it, it's not important.
This is a bizarre definition of "important"; it might work for
"influential" or "popular", but that is not what makes something
important. Many new ideas are tangential to a general education about a
subject, but are no less important to the advancement of knowledge.
Textbooks are instruments for parroting the party line of received
wisdom. They do little to address controversial issues.
Ec