The first thing that made me stop was the poem on p.271. It made me wonder how them writing about arithmetic, since that was considered high level back then, whether there will come a time when someone will look back at what we are doing now (something like quantum mechanics) and find it cute as well. To my surprise, the author mentions the same thing at the end of the paper: Is it not possible that someday a high school student may laugh condescendingly and say, "And they got graduate credit for that!"
Another interesting aspect is how "there were no examinations in the modern sense of the term", and how students just had to give their word that they studied it. It made me wonder how way back then they were still learning stuff without really examining people, and people were gaining knowledge, so how come we have to do it these days? Could it be possible they were just learning for the sake of it? It's a long topic to discuss but definitely an interesting one.
"The teachers were often famous mathematicians, translators, commentators, and authors of texts". Sometimes I think whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe at some point we will reach an asymptote in terms of how much knowledge we can gain in a lifetime. What would fame look like then? Someone with a Ph.D in mathematics today definitely knows way more than a lot of mathematicians in the past, yet they are not as famous. Another thing that comes to mind is whether students benefit from having someone famous teach them. I'm not sure yet if this is good.
Marius, I like your speculation about future perspective on our knowledge. The development of artificial intelligence makes so much possible!
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