NP Alabama Pi

[desert search for techno allah]

jporter writes:
>definitely seem to be a lost middle ground. Your post reminded me of a NY
>Times article from Feb 10, 1998, that's been lying around on my bedroom
>floor: *Useful Invention or AbsoluteTruth: What is Math?* by George Johnson.
>At last, an excuse to pick it up.
>
>I won't reproduce it here, but the gist: There seems to be growing support,
>among those who think about such things, that Pi (and other versions of
>Platonic Idealism) ain't so absolute, after all. Not that Math is a
>"relativistic free-for-all," but it may very well be a human invention- a
>manifestation not just of our brains but of our bodies, and the "grounding
>metaphors" [George Lakoff- quoted in the art.] that link them.
>
>Bottom line: Math works, but that doesn't mean it's the absolute truth, even
>though many scientists (crypto-Platonists, no doubt!) appear to operate as
>such.

Most mathematicians, if pressed, seem to profess some kind of platonism.
Most mathematicians aren't philosophers, though; aside from their knowledge
of the scientific method and its dovetailing with empiricism, most
natural and social scientists probably know very little about epistemology,
as well. So try not to hold it against us as a profession. :)

There are others, though, who stake out other positions similar to
those below.

The idea that mathematical truths are not absolute is not a new one.
Hilbert's program pursued the idea that mathematics was, to put it
bluntly, only a game played with symbols. John Stuart Mill saw the
truths of mathematics as highly verified empirical generalizations
(unfortunately his arguments were poor, so they were mostly discounted
by his contemporaries and later folks like the logical positivists) -
i.e., not 100%-certainly true. More contemporary work has been done
to revive ideas in these spirits, after the trouncing given to
them by people like Russell - so they're far from dead.





Josh

-- 
josh blog: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~kortbein/blog/
      tdr: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~kortbein/tdr/