Re: Platonism

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/09/05 

Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 18:58:54 GMT

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:40:41 +0000 (UTC), Neil W Rickert
<rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>tchow@lsa.umich.edu writes:
>>In article <d0l42c$d7l$1@usenet.cso.niu.edu>,
>>Neil W Rickert <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>
>>>I'm reminded of when a former colleague considered writing a graduate
>>>text in number theory. He wanted to title it "Elementary Arithmetic".
>
>>I seem to remember that Hardy and Wright were going to title their book
>>"An Introduction to Arithmetic" before they thought better of it.
>
>When my colleague was suggesting that title, I could see the gleam in
>his eye. He was thinking about the deliberations of the graduate
>school curriculum committee when being asked to approve a class in
>elementary arithmetic.
>
>>It's quite amusing to me that mathematicians use a lot of words differently
>>even from, say, engineers. Jacobson's books "Basic Algebra I" and "Basic
>>Algebra II" are not written for middle-schoolers.
>
>Perhaps mathematicians are given to understatement. Likewise
>physicists, or at least some of them, are given to overstatement
>("The physics of immortality", "the God particle").

I've personally heard of the discovery of the holy grail in physics at
least half a dozen times. Perhaps the announcements were premature.

Regards - Lester

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