 This page is an archive from the previous version of The Row Boat, which is why it doesn't look and work the same as the current version. However, these archives are fully functional and integrated with the new system.
Why does this site permit advertising?
Powered by Little Logger |
The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
An Exchange on Math5/08/2008 00:31:06Below is an exchange I had today with my friend Tom Cannell, who is working on a thesis about AIDS and religion in Africa. Before posting, he asked me to make clear that nobody gets the impression that he was never any good at math and only got through Calculus class with the help of his friend Patrick. From: Tom Cannell Subject: a query? Date: May 7, 2008 12:39:21 PM EDT To: Nathan Schneider Yesterday in a used book store i bought a book called A Tour of the Calculus, in hopes of reconnecting with that kind of thinking (the other day while I was biking a math problem came to me and i realized that while I once would have known how to solve it, I no longer had any idea....although, and this is interesting, the intuitions, grounded in what I used to know, remain somewhat, I just can't justify them). Ok, but the point is that I looked up the author of this book, David Berlinski, to discover that he is an intelligent designer. My question for you, as someone who has studied this, is whether this Berlinski could explain the Calculus to me in such a way that would subtly infect my mind with impure unorthodox cosmology? it was great to see you last week. Glad you are settled in to your new place. The bike ride sounded totally sweet and i wish i had done it. take care tom From: Nathan Schneider Subject: Re: a query? Date: May 7, 2008 12:56:10 PM EDT To: Tom Cannell Tom-o, Well the other day you were talking about how you know lots of doctors and so forth who are into religion as well as being scientists. It turns out, according to polls (e.g., here and here), that among scientists there are two groups that are the exception to the general rule of disproportionate nonbelief: doctors and mathematicians. Doctors, the conventional wisdom goes, live lives of caring. They see people go through extraordinary emotional events and are constantly faced with the specter of death. A kind of interpersonal religiosity seems to go well with this. Plus, not needing to worry about the evolutionary why's of the human body so much as the how's, they are not so utterly indebted to a non-creationist worldview as paleontologists might be. With mathematicians, apparently, it is the exact opposite. Their spirituality tends to be impersonal, downright Platonic. According to these surveys, many mathematicians believe that the universe is ruled by eternal, abstract, mathematical forms that are more real than the stuff of existence. Again, this can be made to fit with conventional theism without too much trouble. So the answer is yes, right? - you do have to worry about being influenced. People who do math (whether or not with an ID-er) end up seeing the world somewhat differently than those who don't. I wouldn't be surprised if his ID worldview hasn't virally infected his whole mathematical consciousness. On the other hand, such a person may actually be the best possible person to learn math from—someone who believes in math so much he thinks it is real and divine. Much better than some postmodernist who will just say, "It is all arbitrary symbols anyway..." Platonically yours, ntn
re: An Exchange on Math - 5/08/2008 00:32:08
|
|
| |
