Radioactive Rivers

David Casseres casseres at apple.com
Mon Mar 10 12:30:42 CST 1997


>Although I tend to find myself agreeing, almost reflexively, with most of
>what David C. sez (perhaps it is the crystalline lucidity of his prose), to
>say Wiener was not a scientist is bizarre. Math is an art and not a
>science? I always assumed that the SHROUD/SHOCK section of V. was a step
>into Dr. Norbert's lab.

Crystalline lucidity?  Aw, that kind of stuff makes me giggle'n'sneeze.  
Thanks.  But really, math is math and science is science.  The central 
preoccupations are different, the training is different, and the 
personalities involved are very different.  The most theoretical branches 
of physics get to be somewhat like math, and math is of course heavily 
used in all sorts of science.  But it's only in the bowels of a 
technological project, whether it's bombs or hypersonic flow, that the 
scientists and the mathematicians really get into doing the same stuff.  
BTW it's not that math is art rather than science -- it's that math is, 
well, math.  More closely related to logic than to any other discipline.


Cheers,
David




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