On 9/15/2011 12:46 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
This witness a deep misunderstanding of mathematics. Mathematics single out our absolute
modesty. It is not an instrument of power, it is a realm of exploration, and we know
about nothing about it.
The search for ultimate laws is what interest us, independently of the nature of math
and reality. You can't argue against a taste or a passion.
Of course there are other path, like mediation, self-observation, art, the plant. Those
are not incompatible. But in science, math is both a useful simplifying tool and an
object of infinite exploration, and delightful surprises.
In fact, the very age of emergence can be dated from Gödel 1931, which contains the
premisse that the whole of math is not enough to understand what emerge in arithmetic
from inside. After Gödel we know that there are typhoon in Platonia.
Laughlin expose only its reductive view of math, but it is not his fault, math is not
really taught at school, and the actual teaching perverts it and disgusts people from
it. What a pity!
Bruno
"The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to
expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies."
--- Norm Levitt, Prof Mathematics Rutger University
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