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Re: Non-Euclidean Arithmetic
Posted:
Sep 8, 2012 4:35 PM
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On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Jonathan Crabtree
<sendtojonathan@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Thank you Joe!
>
> That is the 'what and why' of ASAPANS (as simple as possible and no simpler).
>
> Multiplication should have been clarified by Einstein.
>
> Multiplication is NOT scaling.
>
I think a fairly common mistake among mathematicians is to think their
job is to develop "global meanings" in the sense of their being a top
level namespace that anchors all the others, a fixed firmament.
On the other hand, the more productive of the lot are reconciled to
"local meanings" with well defined language games, oft revolving
around so-called "axioms" which mnemonically rhyme with both "axes"
and "maxims" (axial maxims).
Think of a drawer full of board games, acquired of the years.
Yahtzee, Stratego, Chess... Chinese Checkers, Go. Hundreds, maybe
thousands, maybe "an infinity of games". Is there one ring to rule
them all, one board game to bind them? Monopoly? Parcheesi? Nah,
don't got, don't need.
Mathematics is a harbor for what I'd call "fundamentalists" of the
same ilk who park their craft in religions. Not exclusively of
course. You have plenty of polymath cosmopolitans parked here too,
like Martin Gardener.
The math fundies are zealots in the same sense that they not only want
their own sandcastles respected, but they want to go down the beach
kicking down others' sandcastles because there can and should be only
one universal language of mathematics (like Taliban defacing Buddhist
frescos, or crazed Americans burning Korans). These are like the lost
tribe from the Tower of Babel or never "got it" about what God did on
that day (He destroyed even the possibility of a global namespace,
bringing an end forever to "one size fits all"). Maybe if you explain
it to fundamentalists in Old Testament terms like that, at least some
will get in what way they've been sinners and repent, but most will
keep going along their intolerant paths, straight to the hells they
deserve.
One reason I like tetravolumes and preaching an alternative to
"cubing" as a model of 3rd powering as it's so disruptive of congealed
zealotry. The cruft of the ages is exposed as such: cruft. We can
question authority at an elementary school level if we like, in ways
the fundies are rather helpless to defend against. Easy winnings.
However I don't make the same mistake of thinking I need to replace
Earthling math with what I've taken to spinning as Martian math. We
have more intelligent ways of networking with world leaders than that.
Collaboration is the name of the game. We know what it means to live
in a multi-polar world with no single "superpower" or "axis" (in the
singular sense). We're not just more "Babelite mathematicians" who
don't get it.
Kirby
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