Ever since I first came to Santa Fe, and joined the extensive computation culture here, I felt I have detected in the software people here something equivalent to the physics- envy that we psychologists are prone to: let's call it math-envy. Math-Envy seems to be that while programming is subject to the vicissitudes of any linguistic enterprise, mathematics displays true formalism.... "you always know where you stand" in mathematics.
The more I have read ... most recently Rosen, Reuben Hersh, George Laykof, Monk's biolography of Wittgenstein --- the more it seems that the best one can say of mathematics is that "If you know where you are standing in mathematics, you know where you stand" in mathematics. Take Zero for instance, and minus numbers, and roots of minus numbers, etc., etc. All of these things are metaphoric extensions and, as Laykof points out, in fact zero is different depending on which of several metaphors one has in mind when one is using it. Thus, the sense of safety one gets in mathematics comes from the tendancy of mathematicians to hide out in deep silos, rather than from a greater power or universality of their inter-silo discourse. It is the same sense of safety that one gets in any monastery. Or, I imagine, that one gets from deep involvement in any programming language. Now, the proposition having been stated so baldly -- and no doubt ineptly -- by an outsider, I suspect that ALL mathematicians on the list will now agree that the case has been OVER stated and that, whatever the differences in degree of formalism within the various forms of mathematics, all mathematics is clearer than other forms of argument, such as plain old vanilla philosophy, or, say, experiment and proof in psychology. Getting you all to agree in this way will have been my highest achievement of the day. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ============================================================ 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
