Here's something I sent to the editors of the "Journal of Tolkien Research" in reply:

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While there are a number of questionable characterizations in Dr. Larsen’s latest ("Moons, Maths, and Middle-earth”, <https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol15/iss1/2/>) that could be most charitably regarded as having been made for rhetorical effect, she lays an outright unexamined and unjustified claim directly at my feet that I will not leave unremarked upon.

In her footnote 8 she writes:

"When I presented this paper at Oxonmoot 2022 an attendee afterwards shared with me that Hostetter has apparently stated elsewhere that Tolkien did make errors in this long-division calculation. I do not know when/where said comment was made, but if true, the fact that the editor made the decision not to share that fact with the readership of his volume is distressing, given how it feeds into the misconception of Tolkien as a mathematics whiz.”

It apparently does not occur to Dr. Larsen that I, not myself given to working out ratios to 360 decimal places, simply did not know (for certain) that Tolkien had made a mistake in his calculation. In reality, the fact that Tolkien had indeed erred was brought to my attention and demonstrated (using a modern web-based calculation tool that makes quick work of such things) only well after the book’s publication. Asserting as Dr. Larsen does that I knew of Tolkien’s error beforehand and made a “decision not to share that fact with the readership of the volume” is about as unthinking and uncharitable an assumption as they come.

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This is, alas, far from the only misunderstanding of actual fact in Dr. Larsen's windmill crusade, but it is I think the most egregious. Caveat lector.

It's actually a month before publication https://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/n ... p?topic_id=3727&start=200 , which makes no essential difference though: it's too late to make any changes in the 1st print.
I've also written to Dr. Larsen to explain what actually happened.

Thanks for clarifying that Aelfwine. I was reading the paper this morning and it struck me as a poorly included piece of third hand 'chitter chatter'. Seeking out the editor himself seemed a much better direction.

Larsen could have easily come across the thread here too (https://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/n ... _id=33703#forumpost33703) as I doubt many people serious about reading NoME would not know of it. There you make clear that Tolkien had made errors, in the exchanges with others here. And that was very obviously after the book had been printed.

I'd forgotten that mention of the calculation had been released as part of an online preview. But the point does indeed remain: by that point, it was too late to make alterations to the text, which had already long since gone to print.

Not that I would have made any alteration even if I could, since I did not and still have no intention of transcribing Tolkien's own calculation, as irrelevant to my actual points, being: "how?" and "why?" would Tolkien undertake such a calculation in the first place! THAT, together with the hours of detailed work he devoted to Elvish maturity and population growth, with its own sets of eye-splitting ratios, is what makes them examples of Tolkien's hitherto unguessed — at least by me — mathematical abilities. The idea that I meant by this to refer to any particular genius or use of advanced mathematics by Tolkien (as Larsen further mischaracterizes my words — "glowing endorsement" indeed) is a completely unwarranted leap, a teapot in search of a tempest.

I had recalled that something along this topic had come up in Aelfwine's talk at Marquette - thankfully they have just posted the recording of the video online (it will be removed when the exhibition ends in December).

https://marquette.hosted.panopto.com/P ... da-4e57-acc3-af2600e8716e

The question about mathematics was asked around the 1:10:00 mark for those interested.

The paper is no longer available. It was withdrawn so maybe a mod could update the opening post to note that for future visitors.

The paper has been (cursorily, and pretty clearly begrudgingly) revised to address my chief criticism of it, and moved here:

https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol15/iss1/4

(Other issues remain — like deciding I mean one thing by a term ("precise") that I very clearly did not mean, and even though the author herself admits the one she assigns it is not the only possible meaning, seemingly so as to keep a grip on the axe she wants to grind — but correcting even such central matters is usually dismissed as mere quibbling, so there it lies.)

I have no stake in this, but having read it, I think the tone of the article reflects poorly on its author and the journal that published it. I genuinely can’t imagine putting something like this in print, and I’ve had my share of academic disagreements with other scholars. Particularly odd was the bit about how the editor of NOME fails to point out a mathematical error (p.9), but actually he does point out lots of errors in the endnotes (p.10), but actually that’s not good enough because it isn’t “obvious to the reader” (p.10).

Moreover, the whole thing is based on an unsubstantiated premise: people are thinking of Tolkien as an “Einstein” (and it’s largely thanks to NOME). But who thinks this? Certainly none of the reviews cited in the article (pp.10–11), except maybe the one with the hyperbolic (but perhaps simply erroneous) use of the word “calculus.” Mostly the quotations just say that they were unaware that Tolkien had done so much calculation and that NOME is a bit of a slog to get through (unsurprisingly). I’m all for not mythologizing “great men,” but the need to do so in this case seems to be, well, imaginary.

Thanks, glad to know someone else "gets it".