Are old books better than modern textbooks? Why can I enjoy reading them more than the ones my uni issues? Ex:
Boole's Treatsie on Differential Equations helped me understand the subject way better than anything I read before.
Same with Gauss' Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.
And Newton's Principia.
Or Lagrange's Mechanique Analytique.
And Euclid's Elements of course.
In these books things are worked up from very basic to complex, and the steps are shown. Reason is explained, and discourses on philosophy are explored.
Why don't books do this anymore? What is it about the newer, cut and paste, facts only textbooks that disillusion many from maths? Even modern greats like Tao can't write a good text the way Hamilton or Poincare could.
People say those who can't do, teach. But obviously those who could do, taught best, as evidenced by Euclid and Newton and Euler &c. This has changed for some reason, though.
Well /sci/? You do read the original works, dont you?