Somehow this makes me feel better.
In an undated manuscript held in the British Library, scientist and painter Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788) writes to the German theoretician Franz Æpinus. The subject is Æpinus' famous Essay of 1759, in which Æpinus offers the first successful algebraic analysis of electricity and magnetism.
Wilson explains to Æpinus that, while he's sure it's all very good, frankly that mathematical stuff is just not for him, or other British scientists. He says:
"The introduction of algebra in experimental philosophy is very much laid aside with us, as few people understand it; and those who do, rather chose to avoid that close kind of attention: tho' I make no doubt but I dare say you had a very good reason for making use of that method."
That politely condescending tone -- both haughty and parochial at once -- is depressingly familiar from my upbringing in the UK some 200 years later. Still, it helps explain why my university refused to teach me European philosophy and why my secondary school allowed me to give up mathematics at 14, even though I continued to study science (in the form of economics, geography and the philosophy of science) for years after.
Now that I have a math-loving child starting to ascend the cliff face of grade school mathematics in a school district that revers the subject, I'm especially lamenting my pathetic excuse for a mathematical education.
The quote is from Patricia Fara's An Entertainment for Angels (Icon, UK, 2002) -- a (very) brief look at how electricity was research and theorized in the Enlightenment.