Thomas Gradgrind sez, "Shut up and calculate!"

[barbie gaze]

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and calculations.
A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and
nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.
Thomas Gradgrind, sir -- peremptorily Thomas -- Thomas Gradgrind. With a
rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his
pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and
tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case
simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into
the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind or John Gradgrind, or
Joseph Gradgrind (all suppositions, no existent persons), but into the head
of Thomas Gradgrind -- no sir!

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to
his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such
terms, no doubt, substituting the words 'boys and girls', for 'sir', Thomas
Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him,
who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned,
he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to
blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed
a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for
the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

“Shut up and calculate!” As physics became more mathematical and abstract
during the past century, that phrase—first uttered by physicist David
Mermin—became its mantra. Indeed, the more that physicists stopped worrying
about what their complicated equations *meant *and simply ran the numbers,
the more progress they made. Some of their predictions have now been
confirmed by experiments to 10 decimal places or more— the most accurate
predictions in history. But the cost of this progress was striking: physics
became more and more alienating as fewer and fewer people understood it.
As Frank Close explains in *The Infinity Puzzle, *for a long time even
physicists felt discontent at this state of affairs. The book brims with
charming anecdotes about particle physics between the 1950s and 1980s, when
breakthroughs came almost too fast to be comprehended and every scientist
seemed to be maneuvering (and occasionally begging) for Nobel prizes. But
the book also plumbs the origins of modern physics, especially troubles
with the concept of infinity.

http://theamericanscholar.org/fields-apart/

Math Wars
http://theamericanscholar.org/fields-apart/
New Math
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2764.htm
No Math
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2760.htm


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y3NuPjlxng
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