Tag: mathematics

  • Mathematicians are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that they are machines

    I am reading a Russian book about the “no computer thesis” based on the Gödel theorem. In the book there was a nice quote – see below – that somewhat close to what Bruno says. “And if such is the case, then we (qua mathematicians) are machines that are unable to recognize the fact that…

  • Mathematics as Escape

    Quotes from Edward Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, Chapter Twenty-One “Shuddering Before the Beautiful” ‘For the mathematically minded, the notion of glimpsing God’s plan has always exerted a hypnotic pull. The seduction is twofold. On the one hand, delving into the world’s mathematical secrets…

  • Weyl on mathematics vs. reality

    From Bas C van Fraassen Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective p. 208 “Herman Weyl expressed the fundamental insight as follows in 1934: ‘A science can never determine its subject-matter expect up to isomorphic representation. The idea of isomorphism indicates the self-understood, insurmountable barrier of knowledge. […T]oward the “nature” of its objects science maintains complete indifference.’…

  • Free Will and Mathematics

    Alekandr Lokshin has a book Free Will and Mathematics (in Russian) http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/L/LOKSHIN_Aleksandr_Aleksandrovich/Lokshin_A.A._Svobodnaya_volya_i_matematika.(2012).pdf.zip and he has started a discussion on the everything list with an abstract of the book in English http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/276f7dffa1c88b0a Alekandr Lokshin, 27.05.2012 20:51: Alexander A. Lokshin FREE WILL AND MATHEMATICS Moscow, MAKS-Press, 2012 , 40 pages (abstract) The general idea of the booklet…

  • Two Mathematicians in a Bunker and Existence of Pi

    Below there is a problem that I have formulated in order to understand better what is mathematics. There are two related dicussions: http://groups.google.com/group/embryophysics/t/419d3c1fec30e3b5 http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/t/b8d7efb597b2349a I will start first with the final version of the problem (Bruno’s comments were very helpful) and after that I will present my messages that led to the problem and the…