Actually I can follow Glen's line of reasoning (I think). For example, the way Maths works is that a "theorem" is "proved" by trying to prove a "conjecture". When that approach fails you end up proving a "special case" of the conjecture - which in turn gets elevated to its own status as a "theorem". "Proving" Fermat's Last Theorem took 3 centuries and generated an equal number of theorems for mathematicians to solve/prove. The ultimate perpetual machine to keep mathematicians employed till either the existence of "God" (the grand unified theorem of everything) is proved or we have 33 billion gods (theorems) as we do in India.
Sarbajit On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't follow Glen's 'You can't generalize across all of math/logic to > talk about "why theorems?" any more than you can generalize over all of > natural language and ask "why sentences?" ' > > The original intent was to ask why there always seems to be hidden > structure -- which is revealed by theorems. It's not the theorems I'm > concerned about; it's the hidden structure. > > > -- Russ > > > > > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:29 AM, glen e. p. ropella < > g...@agent-based-modeling.com> wrote: > >> Owen Densmore wrote circa 10-04-26 08:59 AM: >> > The OP's "Too many interesting comments to follow up" sorta sounds like >> > "I've lost interest"! >> >> Heh, yeah; but words have consequences! ;-) No (good?) deed goes >> unpunished. >> >> -- >> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
