  The Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism in quantum field theory was originally
invented to address the difficult problem of finding diagrammatic descriptions
of oscillating integrals with degenerate critical points. But since then, BV
algebras have become interesting objects of study in their own right, and
mathematicians sometimes have good understanding of the homological aspects of
the story without any access to the diagrammatics. In this note we reverse the
usual direction of argument: we begin by asking for an explicit calculation of
the homology of a BV algebra, and from it derive Wick's Theorem and the other
Feynman rules for finite-dimensional integrals.
