On Sun, 08 May 2005, Kirby Urner wrote: > The exalted status of sets in 1960s USA grade school math traces back to > Ivory Tower innovations by Russell/Whitehead et al in the UK, and their > attempt to put arithmetic on a "secure footing" using set concepts. This > footing became even more convoluted with Cantor.
> Wittgenstein, a hero of mine, was always in the dissenting camp, thinking > set theory "underpins" arithmetic the way a painted foundation supports a > painted tower, i.e. it doesn't really. Can you say some more about that? I thought Wittgenstein was a protege of Russell, and changed his mind later. Was he always claiming the emperor had no clothes? > Purists might complain that I'm trying to ruin the basic math curriculum, by > polluting it with CS concepts. But I say I'm trying to *rescue* set > concepts from obscurity and neglect, by integrating them into a nutritious > and wholesome diet featuring a wider variety of data structures. On the other side, at the college level, there is the math-thinking list of computer science instructors trying to increase the rigor of the CS curriculum. URL: http://www.cs.geneseo.edu/mailman/listinfo/math-thinking/ -- Greg Matheson, Taiwan _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig