[lbo-talk] Re: Scientistism

Tim Francis-Wright tim at francis-wright.com
Wed Oct 11 12:26:13 PDT 2006


ravi wrote:
> Technical people are often like the preppy little kid who likes to
> correct others that a dolphin is not a fish (the latest factoid he has
> learnt), irrespective of the context of the use. That is a shallow
> arrogance. Wisdom is a different thing altogether.

Is this not more than a little unfair? Dolphins are air-breathing mammals, and fish are not. The difference is important. The preppy little kid is more the kid who points out that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegatable.

My positive contribution to this discussion is that mathematics seems to be the science that adults are positive that they cannot understand. Lots of folks know only a smattering of chemistry, but they do not explain it away by claiming that they were always "bad at it."

Yet, the amount of math needed to understand profound and useful mathematical truths (the infinite number of primes, Cantor's diagonalization theorem, public-key encryption) is really quite finite and easy to grasp.

--tim francis-wright (still glad that I never had to make a 17-gon with compass and straightedge)



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