Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Wolf Kirchmeir (wwolfkir_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:31:20 -0500

Albert Wagner wrote:
> Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
>
>> Albert Wagner wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>> Actually, applied mathematics, as used in engineering is good.
>>> Everything else in mathematics is pure fantasy serving no purpose
>>> but to entertain mathematicians.
>>
>>
>>
>> And very often, until the math is invented by those 'orrible
>> mathematikers who are merely fantasising, there isn't any math to apply.
>
>
> Don't flatter yourself. Most engineers know what the math is for, and
> what in reality the math represents. Math isn't magic, after all.
> Anyone competent enough in math to graduate from engineering school
> could do as well as anyone posting to this NG.

Here's an anecdote. In 1st year engineering, we had a course on
"Materials and Processes." It was, I now realise, an excuse for the Dean
to talk to us ignorant adolescents about the profession of engineering,
and to reminisce, and to drop little intellectual bombs, just in case we
thought that engineers knew everything (whereas those artsy-fartsies
knew nothing, of course, and besides they didn't get anywhere with the
nurses.) One lecture was about columns, and buckling, and how the shape
of the column has more to do with its resistance to buckling than the
stuff it was made of, and so on. He mentioned that the equations that
described the buckling of a column were the same as the equations that
describe harmonic motion, such as that of a spring. He said he had no
idea why. I was very young, but this was an Aha! of the first order.

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