[LMB] Another _Spirit Ring_ Passage

[Jim Parish]

Another passage from _The Spirit Ring_ just caught my eye. The 
speaker is Archbishop Monreale:

"What a boon it would be... Suppose, every year, the Church were to 
publish a book of the best new spells men had devised, and send 
copies to every Diocese. Men might be willing to give up their secrecy, 
to compete for the honor of such fame..."

When I teach my History of Mathematics course, I spend a fair amount 
of time on the corresponding change in mathematics, which took 
*centuries* to work itself out: from the Cardano-Tartaglia quarrel (made 
more bitter because Tartaglia's livelihood was at stake) in the 16th 
century, to the Newton-Leibniz controversy (driven, primarily, by 
Newton's near-psychotic temper), to Gauss' reluctance to reveal his 
work in the 19th century. (It was in that century that the great journals 
finally got off the ground. All hail August Crelle!) Bujold manages to 
encapsulate the fundamental issue, in an off-hand comment...

Jim Parish