Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Albert Wagner (albertwagner_at_cox.net)
Date: 03/07/05 

Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 12:09:40 -0600

robert j. kolker wrote:
>
>
> Albert Wagner wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm just guessing without a comprehensive re-read of this subthread.
>> But I think what Neil and others are really doing is compensating for
>> the lack of a randomly accessible database of infinite numbers. With
>> such a database, no ordering would be required. Without such a
>> database then either (a) the set must be ordered or (b) a sequential
>> search for a match must be done for each iteration. Thinking like a
>> programmer: This is analogous to the matching of transactions to
>> histories in pre-database punched card days. But I am a programmer,
>> not a mathematician. So YMMV.
>
>
> If you want to do mathematics think like a mathematician, not a
> programmer. The programmer's stock and trade consists of algorithms and
> their implementations on specific machines in the context of specific
> operating systems.

An algorithm is an algorithm and data is data. So *** you and
your 'mathematicians stock and trade'.

> The mathematicians stock and trade consistes of theorems derived from
> postulates.
>
> Bob Kolker
> 

-- 
"I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based
on the field concept, i. e., on continuous structures. In that
case nothing remains of my entire castle in the air,
gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."
	-- Albert Einstein in a 1954 letter to Michele Besso.
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