Le 18-août-06, à 01:14, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
> > > Bruno Marchal writes: > >> There is no authoritative argument in math. There are fashion, >> prejudice, stubbornness and many human things like that, but nobody >> serious in math will believe something because the boss said so. > > Interesting: this marks mathematics as different from just about > every other academic field. Perhaps. Please note that I was talking about people "serious in math". Also, I am not saying that a mathematician will not pretend something interesting because the boss said so. Only, I have never seen (even in old text) a statement in math said to be true by a mathematician referring to a boss. Even at the time of the sad idolatry around Pythagoras. This is so true that they coins two terms: 1) "mathematician" for those who understand, and <I have forget the name but will seach:sorry> for those who repeat the math without understanding. But if you have a counterexample I am interested to know. Other field are different by their very nature. A high school student cannot reasonably ask his teacher to justify a statement like "whales weight such number of tons". Some plausibility judgement are obligatory. In math, plausibility argument are needed for having some idea of the work of math colleagues in other field. If you ask me if I believe in Fermat Last theorem, I will say yes in the coffee room, but not in the office. The same for the four color theorem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
