The alien hypothesis?

[John Doe]

thank you Blake; as usual, you puy it much better than
I could...I am always puzzled why that childlike
passion and zest to Know is so lost on many
non-scientists...and why consequently they think all
science is motivated  by  Big Bad Military profits or
Nasty Corporate Sponsors..again...they should get to
know a little about Feynman, and it would dispell some
of that tired stereotype....

--- Blake Stacey <blake.stacey at ens-lyon.fr> wrote:

> Quoting Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>:
> 
> > At 07:32 PM 10/17/2005, jporter wrote:
> >
> > Fermat's theorem has application in cryptography
> the use of which is 
> > essential to the military.  Strong encryption is
> classified as a 
> > munition by the U.S.G.
> > Please try again, Mr. Doe.
> 
> Um.
> 
> The fact that Fermat's theorem has cryptographic
> applications is 
> incidental.  It
> is possible that some of the grants which allowed
> Andrew Wiles to eat while he
> worked were originally established to fund
> mathematics that might have 
> military
> applications.  However, those applications were not
> what drove Wiles to 
> work on
> the Theorem; instead, he desired to fulfill a
> childhood dream.
> 
> Analogy:  Johnny Teenager works after school, making
> Xerox copies and 
> fixing the
> coffee machine at a defense contractor in town. 
> After pocketing 
> several months
> of 1.5 * minimum wage, he hops in his beat-up Subaru
> and follows a punk 
> band on
> tour all summer.  Is punk rock now funded by the
> federal government?  In an
> accountancy sense, perhaps yes, but in a moral
> sense?
> 
> I hasten to add that Wiles proved Fermat's Last
> Theorem by proving the
> Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture, a statement about
> elliptic curves and modular
> forms which earlier mathematicians had shown to be
> equivalent to Fermat's
> statement of algebra.  With a high degree of
> certainty, neither Taniyama nor
> Shimura received money from the DOD or the NSA.  How
> do we apportion the guilt
> now?
> 
> Furthermore, if all mathematical discoveries which
> impact cryptography
> automatically fall under the "munitions" umbrella,
> then we better classify the
> integers double-quick.
> 
> Blake
> 
> 
> 



		
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