I’m still recovering from the flu. About 90% there, but this blog is written using the final 10%. Plus I have foresworn commenting on wast we used to call Current Affairs, or you would have got something about the Lindsay Clancy trial and the continuing farce of Age Verification. Not to mention the unanswered question of our time: WTF was the American Military doing when it told its Commander-in-Chief that a war against the Iranians and their best mates the Houthis could be won this side of a cold hell? The Middle East never did make sense, and it makes even less sense now. I might have weighed in about the protests against illegal immigration as well. But I have said I won’t do any of that, so I won’t.
So in the meantime, I’m half-way down this rabbit-hole. If you want to know what actual mathematics sounds like, try this. Don’t try to understand the maths, at least the first time through, but aim for the biographical remarks Borcherds drops from time to time. When I heard Borcherds saying that the entire subject arose from someone’s study of a super-obscure lattice, I had to reach for Rule 14 of the methodology of mathematics: no progressive research programme ever came of Lattice Theory.
The utter incomprehensibility of this talk - again on the first time through - is an example of why philosophers of mathematics are, with a handful of exceptions, confined to marginal comments and subjects. It takes some serious effort to understand this stuff, and even more to understand why it might have the slightest value to anyone.
See you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment