Oct 7, 2025
Ahab's Arithmetic: The Mathematics of Moby Dick
This is Not My Article, but I would like to send a heartfelt thank you to Sarah B. Hart for the scholarship. Which it's 30 pages on Melville's textual mathematics enthusiasm!
The writing does contain context for both Melville fans without much math and math fans without much Melville (therefore math and Melville for the bystander as well).
It also describes contemporary math textbooks and therefore refers to "tables of units to help you work out the number of scruples in a dram, or the number of hogsheads in a pipe." (Seriously, words people, get in here for the vocabulary, it is a time.) Also, everyone say thank you calculators that none of us has to calculate fourth roots by hand anymore. Etc.