Knuth then enumerated his motivations, as a computer scientist, to read the history of science. First, reading history helped him to understand the process of discovery. Second, understanding the difficulty and false starts experienced by brilliant historical scientists in making discoveries that specialists now find obvious helped him to see what made concepts challenging to students and thus to become a “much better writer and teacher.” Third, appreciating the historical contribution of non-Western scientists helped in “celebrating the contributions of many cultures.” Fourth, history is the craft of telling stories, which is “the best way to teach, to explain something.” Fifth, the biographies of scientists teach tactics for a successful and rewarding career. Sixth, history teaches how human experience has changed over time. As humans we should care about that.
Knuth also identified some special contributions to the history of science that professionally trained historians are uniquely well placed to make. We are good at “smoking out” primary sources and putting historical activities in the context of broader timelines. He also appreciates our ability to translate papers written in languages that he cannot himself read. He finds attempts at historical analysis “probably the least interesting” aspects of our papers but appreciates lengthy quotations from primary sources.