dms:

> Personally, I think there is much more to be
> gained from the concrete analysis of the concrete
> conditions of exchange, production, overproduction,
> and profit, here and now, then and there, or any
> combination thereof.

Hey dms!

Tell me how you are planning to conduct that concrete
analysis?

I once had a student in my partial differential
equations class who told me that because we were
studying some concrete physical problems, things
should have been much simpler. What that young fellow
did not realize was that what we were studying were
not some concrete physical problems but some
simplified abstractions of them. This was why our
mathematical tools, however difficult they may be to
comprehend, worked. When it comes to real concrete
physical problems, our mathematical tools fare quite
poorly.

Here is another anecdote:

I had a very smart Chinese research brother. That is,
we were the students of the same professor. He once
told me that every year in China thousands of amateur
mathematicians used to submit solutions to the Chinese
Academy of Sciences of Fermat's then unsolved last
problem.

Of course, all those solutions were wrong.

And my Chinese brother concluded his story with this:

You cannot go to the moon by bike! You need a space
craft for that...

Best,

Sabri

Reply via email to