Hi Kathryn,
On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
>
> >Okay. But then why use the same term to refer to
> >whatever-it-is-we're-talking-about-here?
>
> For the same reason physicists chose the terms energy, work, momentum,
> force...
>
> It evokes something of the right gestalt, which gets you a good part of the
> way to communication.
>
Um, speaking as someone with a PhD in physics, I feel obliged to point out
that no physicist would speak of those very terms unless (s)he meant to
use them in the exact and single way that they are very completely and
formally defined. No ambiguity whatsoever.
>
> Why did Godel surprise mathematicians? How could they possibly have
> thought they could capture everything in formalism? My ninth grade
> daughter who does OK in math but is by no means a true talent doesn't
> understand the proof, but she groks the concept and the basic structure of
> the proof. It doesn't surprise her at all because we've been working the
> concepts since she could talk. She wonders how anyone could have imagined
> otherwise.
>
> You can think of God as that still, small voice in your conscience
> reminding you to be intellectually honest and acknowledge that you don't
> have everything in your model.
>
Ah! Nobody is claiming that everything is in any particular model. Rather
simply that one cannot discuss something that is not defined in a model
without (tautologically) leaving essentially infinite room for
miscommunication. Hence Wittgenstein.
>
> Godel, by the way, thought he had a proof that God exists.
>
True. But he also believed his food was poisoning him, and hence came
close to starving himself to death.
The attributes of the proponent of an argument need not adhere to the
argument itself.
David
