Michael Perelman wrote: ?What we have forgotten may
sometimes be more relevant than what we know.? I could
not agree more.

According to Socrates, knowledge comes from
recollection. The same point is made by Bertrand
Russell who says that the point of philosophy is to
start with something so simple as not to seem worth
stating and to end with something so paradoxical that
no one will believe it. 

In a manner, the study of HOT may be seen as a groping
process to discover the obvious, to uncover the naked
truth that has a habit of staying hidden. 

19 years ago, I made a list of 81 journal articles
published in the ten top-rated journals, all of which
began with the claim that the paper?s subject did not
get attention, and yet all had been thoroughly treated
previously. The amateur and the novice have an
obsessive need to show off while the more mature will
take pains to acknowledge the debt to the previous
generation of scholars. The pressure to write one more
article in which something new is purported is the big
enemy of the sanity that comes with the depth of
knowledge that evolved through many generations and
told in HOT.

But who cares?


Mohammad Gani