Part of the problem is doing anything that is not relegated to obscurity. Many researchers face the same problem...

Another aspect is that, beyond the obscurity of such subjects, fewer and fewer people care about the why ; that is not a social value nowadays. I have a distinct feeling for example economists don't really have a solid epistemology ; and they don't feel any need for it. Politicians now care about being elected rather than "the good of the country". People will have no problems working for weapons makers... A society defined by money exchange cares not about the why, as l'argent n'a pas d'odeur - money has no smell.


Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

This Week's finds in Mathematical Physics: week198

While in Hong Kong, I received a copy of a very interesting book:

1) David Corfield, Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics, Cambridge U. Press, Cambridge, 2003. More information and part of the book's introduction available at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~dc23/Towards.htm

I should admit from the start that I'm completely biased in favor of this book, because it has a whole chapter on one of my favorite subjects: higher-dimensional algebra. Furthermore, Corfield cites me a lot and says I deserve "lavish praise for the breadth and quality of my exposition". How could I fail to recommend a book by so wise an author?

That said, what's really special about this book is that it shows a philosopher struggling to grapple with modern mathematics as it's actually carried out by its practitioners. This is what Corfield means by "real" mathematics. Too many philosophers of mathematics seem stuck in the early 20th century, when explicitly "foundational" questions - questions of how we can be certain of mathematical truths, or what mathematical objects "really are" - occupied some the best mathematicians. These questions are fine and dandy, but by now we've all heard plenty about them and not enough about other equally interesting things. Alas, too many philosophers seem to regard everything since Goedel's theorem as a kind of footnote to mathematics, irrelevant to their loftier concerns (read: too difficult to learn).

This is why I have a problem with these proponents of right-brain-left-brain theories, which have included some of my former schoolteachers, even one of the (otherwise) best and most inspirational teachers I've ever had.  As a student, I kept being presented over and over and over with this idea that I had to choose -- are you good at science and math, or are you good at writing and literature and history?  And the truth is, I have an aptitude for both, but this manner of approaching the world (and it is a manner of approaching the world, not just learning) imposed this artificial dilemma -- which am I?  It's not that I regret my choice, so much, it's that I regret the fact that I was told I had to choose, and believed it.

It leads to people in the humanities being completely innumerate, the mathematical equivalent of never having heard the name of Shakespeare or not being able to understand a newspaper article. It also lends to people in science and engineering who can't write to save their lives, even though they may spend a substantial amount of their professional life writing reports.

The reality of mathematics is that there is a lot of writing and that formulas are shorthand, except when one engages in calculation which is considered inelegant. But I am reminded of one time when two professors from teh University came to my high school to make a presentation about the university access examination and the one from the humanities, after stressing the importance of writing clearly and without errors she said something to the effect of "of course, in the science exams you don't need that. The other professor was a Mathematics professor I had met earlier and we looked at each other in horror - all you do in a math exam is write long streams of reasoning.

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo

There's a failure often to understand people and the dynamics of societies and communities and that limits the potential of developing specialisms and their impact - whether it is humanities or science or anything else.

Politics especially.  How many policies are formed that take no account of how society actually works?

I too wasn't happy with having to make the decision between science and humanities/arts.  I'm an all rounder and did science because I was told to in terms of giving me better career prospects.  I don't regret that for a minute since in physics especially I was able to lose myself in a whole new world.

But now I'm older, I find myself consciously developing other skills to create a better balance and a broader understanding of the world around me. Social policy, politics, photography and art - from a science trained brain.  Both sides compliment each other well.

Why oh why theya re not promoted, the structure for this stuff as Migerus says is pure bulls***.

Why this dichotomy.. why not big careers for them.. why not people doing physics and philosophy at the same time..

Philosophers which master physics and antrhopology and math should be rewarded with scholarships... to be sholars!!!

And we should have th media to publish and project those ideas...

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude