This is a pretty weird argument. You can replace math with physics, chemistry, or whatever other science you can think of and the argument still goes through. I

This is a pretty weird argument. You can replace math with physics, chemistry, or whatever other science you can think of and the argument still goes through. If his argument is invariant with respect to subject change it means he's not really addressing anything specific to math but just pointing out that hard things tend to be exclusive things. So in essence the people that say "math is everywhere" are trying to democratize it. Whereas the argument in the SciAm article seems to point to a more stifled mathematical landscape. I've never seen someone make an argument "X is elitist" in order to democratize something. If anything people usually get their pitchforks out and all the folks with an agenda come out of the woodworks and start using the mob to advance their own goals. In this case I suspect there are a few folks that would like to kill funding for basic mathematical research and this guy has started selling them the pitchforks.