On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 08:50:45PM -0500, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
New textbooks are being written *every year* on every topic imaginable. The idea that a person cannot find a new textbook on say "Differential Equations" published in the last *five* years and therefore must refer to Journal articles simply to establish notability, and then to introduce 14 new concepts, never published in any secondary text, is simply untenable. The greater likelihood is that they didn't try :)
Textbooks labeled "Differential equations" will contain the same thing next year that they have for the past 50. In the same way, books labeled "Calculus" will not be amended to cover contemporary research in mathematical analysis. The "textbooks" that might cover contemporary results are graduate-level monographs, many of which are themselves primary sources because of the volume of unpublished material they contain.
- Carl