Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Albert Wagner (albertwagner_at_cox.net)
Date: 03/20/05 

Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 10:43:37 -0600

robert j. kolker wrote:
>
>
> Albert Wagner wrote:
>
>>
>> Neither mathematiker elitists nor their profession nor their language
>> are protected by law. You and your private religion are fair game,
>> just as you believe that theists are fair game. Your 'privileged'
>> position in society is not merit based, but merely assumed by you.
>
>
> I, personally, have no privileged place. On the other hand mathematics
> has made modern physics and ALL of its technological entailments
> possible. Our industrial and technological society has as one of it
> pillars mathematics. Without mathematics there would be no physics.
> Without physics there would be only crude technology. Certainly nothing
> much beyond what the Romans and the Greeks had.
>
> Mathematics is a necessary compenent of modern science.

Just as the *** is the most important part of our anatomy.
Without it we would swell to enormous size, our eyes would cross,
our breath would become labored and foul, our brain would cloud
and our muscles would cramp. So, yes, Bob, you are probably right. 

-- 
"I know that most men, including those at ease with
problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom
accept even the simplest and most obvious truth
if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity
of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining
to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others,
and which they have woven, thread by thread,
into the fabric of their lives." -
	-- Tolstoy