TP or NP? Trial ballon goes up

[Mark Kohut]

No they shoudln't and maybe this is another angle on TRP and math (and science):
 
They are beautiful---and look what we have done to ourselves with them.

From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
To: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 7:50 PM
Subject: Re: TP or NP? Trial ballon goes up


What about mathematical beauty?  

Should artists be responsible for for the perversion and misuse of their work?


On Wednesday, 1 August 2012, Ian Livingston wrote:

Wm James says: 
>
>
>"But when you give the things mathematical and mechanical names and call them so many solids in just such positions, describing just such paths with just such velocities, all is changed... Your 'things' realize the
>consequences of the names by which you classed them."
>
>
>Which, of course, I answered in advance (to complete my sentence that you cite above): The results of "progress" based on changing reality into something else have been, well, catastrophic, to euphemize the result.
>
>
>My point being that much of what we boast as direct results of al Zebra's revolutionary contributions in mathematics has brought ruin to the planet on a level only conceivable as divine wrath in that man's time. There have been real advances in understanding the physical nature of things and how they can be synthesized into dynamic agents of fortune, but every insight seems to be coupled with a score of disasters by which to identify its full efficacy. At the ideal level, I stand with the Luddites; at the pragmatic level, I live in the world of my era. That tension is enough to provide plenty of conflict, and plenty of insight into the dynamism of the mind (or whatever scientists are calling the subjective perspective these days.)
>
>On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>On “efforts to crystallize experience” [which in the case of algebra I’d call abstracting or generalizing]… I’ve probably posted this Dewey/James parlay from Experience and Nature before:
>>---
>>Genuine science is impossible as long as the object esteemed for its own intrinsic qualities is taken as the object of knowledge. Its completeness, its immanent meaning, defeats its use as indicating and implying.
>>   Said William James [Principles of Psychology, II, 605-606] , "Many were the ideal prototypes of rational order:
>>teleological and esthetic ties between things... as well as logical and mathematical relations. The most promising of these things at first were of course the richer ones, the more sentimental ones. The baldest and least
>>promising were mathematical ones; but the history of the latter's application is a history of steadily advancing successes, while that of the sentimentally richer ones is of relative sterility and failure. Take those
>>aspects of phenomena which interest you as a human being most... and barren are all your results. Call the things of nature as much as you like by sentimental moral and esthetic names, no natural consequences follow from
>>the naming... But when you give the things mathematical and mechanical names and call them so many solids in just such positions, describing just such paths with just such velocities, all is changed... Your 'things' realize the
>>consequences of the names by which you classed them." 
>> 
>>Of course it demands both common sense and tact to recognize what you’re giving up in the abstraction process; the development of a science typically involves so much analysis – breaking complex phenomena down to manageable pieces – that you can forget the goal is to reassemble them into a richer understanding of what interested you as a human being in the first place.
>> 
>>The old-timers here will recall that I’ve ranted on this before: Pynchon’s take on technology, science, and occasionally math is so much more knowledgeable and interesting than a cheapjack-Romantic “unweaving the rainbow,” “we murder to dissect” blah blah blah…. 
>> 
>>From:Ian Livingston [mailto:igrlivingston at gmail.com] 
>>
>>Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 4:4
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