Good Karl Weierstrass

[1] "Good Karl Weierstrass looked out upon mathematics; curves and graphs lay roundabout, cubics and quadratics" [Karl stands on a stack of books: Descartes, Leibniz, Bernoulli, Bernoulli again, Bolzano, Cauchy]

[2] "Something in the distant black walked along in silence, carrying upon its back half of modern science." [A curve, area shaded beneath, carries blocks labeled Bio, Chem, Phys.]

[3] "Hither, pupils, see that math – tenuous and pallid, stumbling along its path… do we know it's valid?"

[4] Students: "Karl, that math is calculus – great for computation, but its workings baffle us. Shaky, its foundation."

[5] Karl (holding a notepad): "Bring me paper! Bring me pens! Bring me hope and vigor! We shall give to calculus undisputed rigor!"

[6] "Forth they went with book in hand careful not to skim it, seeking now to understand what defines a limit" [Board: "Limit is… infinitesimal? fluxion? ghost of departed quantity?"]

[7] Students (thinking "ε→0?"): "Karl, the math grows tougher now and the symbols hollow; fails my mind, I know not how – I can scarcely follow."

[8] Karl (holding a derivation of the derivative of x², annotated "huh? who's lim?", "why?", "sorcery!"): "Mark the tough steps on each page, every vague equation. Anyone can be a sage with the right notation!"

[9] "Then to higher echelons they and Karl ascended: deltas, yes, and epsilons till the work was ended." [Board: "For all ε > 0 there exists δ > 0: if 0 < |x − a| < δ then |f(x) − L| < ε."]

[10] "Therefore, students, don't conceal; doubt is no transgression. Wisdom is what you reveal when you ask a que-e-stion"