<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">you likely cited him once or twice.<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Humanist Discussion Group <<a href="mailto:willard.mccarty@MCCARTY.ORG.UK">willard.mccarty@MCCARTY.ORG.UK</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">July 24, 2008 10:29:49 AM GMT-04:00</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><a href="mailto:humanist@Princeton.EDU">humanist@Princeton.EDU</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>22.137 Michael S. Mahoney</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Reply-To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Humanist Discussion Group <<a href="mailto:willard.mccarty@MCCARTY.ORG.UK">willard.mccarty@MCCARTY.ORG.UK</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> </div><div> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 22, No. 137.<br> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London<br> <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/humanist/">www.princeton.edu/humanist/</a><br> Submit to: <a href="mailto:humanist@princeton.edu">humanist@princeton.edu</a><br><br><br><br> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:24:06 +0100<br> From: Willard McCarty <<a href="mailto:willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk">willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk</a>><br> Subject: Michael S. Mahoney<br><br>Dear colleagues,<br><br>The great historian of science, mathematics, technology and computing,<br>Michael S. Mahoney, Professor of History at Princeton, died last night<br>after a severe heart-attack while swimming.<br><br>Mike, as everyone knew him, was one of those very few for whom I would<br>have relinquished many of my years and the life that has come with them<br>in order to be his student. I first met him through his writings while I<br>was trying to figure out what relation humanities computing might have<br>to the experimental sciences. I could see that both kinds of practice<br>shared the epistemic use of equipment, so I figured there must be some<br>relation worth knowing about. Characteristically Mike put versions of<br>most of what he wrote online, so familiarity came easily, and some<br>understanding followed. Then I buckled down and worked my way through<br>papers such as the wonderful "Software as Science -- Science as<br>Software" (2002), which I must have read 5 or 6 times at the first go.<br>Then another historian of science, Jed Buchwald, an old friend and a<br>former student of Mike's and Thomas Kuhn's at Princeton, invited me to<br>give a paper at the Dibner Institute (MIT), at a conference on the<br>history of recent science. This gave me a chance to try out the ideas I<br>had formed, based largely on Mike's work, on the subject of humanities<br>computing and the sciences. Subsequently, as the paper was working its<br>way into print, Mike served as a reviewer, anonymous of course but<br>immediately recognizable. Put as simply as I can, his commentary on<br>that paper taught me how to do it right. Or, rather, as<br>right as I am able.<br><br>When I was asked to organize a year-long lecture series at King's<br>London, which I entitled 'Digital Scholarship, Digital Culture', Mike<br>was one of those I invited. His lecture, "The histories of<br>computing(s)", along with the rest were later published in<br>Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30.2 (2005). Required reading for<br>everyone in humanities computing, I'd say, and I would extend the<br>invitation to all historians of any stripe. Faced with a hugely<br>intractable subject for the intellectual historian's craft, Mike had the<br>wit and wisdom to understand and the honesty to express what we cannot<br>say about computing. "The major problem", he wrote in 'Issues in the<br>history of computing', "is that we have lots of answers but very few<br>questions, lots of stories but no history, lots of things to do but no<br>sense of how to do them or in what order. Simply put, we don't yet know<br>what the history of computing is really about." This from someone who<br>knew the mathematical and technological bases of computing, how to trace<br>the many strands of computing's development and (as Siegfried Zielinski<br>has said) to look for the new in the old rather than the old in the new.<br>"Hype hides history", he remarked in his King's lecture. He knew that<br>questions were the scholar's gold and that they were being obscured by<br>the promoter's (and the promoter's academic helper's) shameless blather.<br>He did more than anyone else I know to show us how we might find that<br>wealth.<br><br>I cannot claim a long personal relationship. I wish I had been of the<br>right age at the right time and place for that to happen. But I can hear<br>the voice and see the face. I know more from him of what our kind can<br>do. Thank you, Mike. Farewell.<br><br>Yours,<br>WM<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>