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"no one confuses mathematics with great art" This is where I stopped reading. Mathematics can be true, beautiful, compelling, creative, unique, etc. He has fai

• fizwhiz 10y ago
  Aye.
• olavk 10y ago
  > Mathematics can be true, beautiful, compelling, creative, unique, etc. Yes, but that does not mean it is art. Art literally means something created by humans, which is distinct from the natural sciences which is studying nature. Both are worthwhile, but it's not the same.
  • IanCal 10y ago
    I really don't think art has such a clear definition, but nevertheless looking at definitions, here's the first thing on Google: > the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. Can you find no space for mathematics there? No definitions or creations produced simply because they are beautiful? Maybe some later found uses, but that feels like discounting Michelangelo's David because it could be used to hold open a large door.
    • olavk 10y ago
      Maybe the word "art" have such positive connotations that it seems disparaging to state that something is not art. But that is not my intention at all. I'm just noting that in the usual sense of the word, math is not art just like say sociology or software design or sex is not art. Of course you can make a definition of art which does include all those activities and everything else for that matter, nobody owns the word.
      • IanCal 10y ago
        I didn't make up a definition though. That's an OED definition of art. Perhaps "doing maths" is often not art, but then neither is writing. Both can serve specific uses that wouldn't easily fall under definitions of art, but that doesn't mean they can't be. Software engineering isn't but then is it really a stretch to describe this spinning globe quine as art? https://github.com/knoxknox/qlobe https://github.com/knoxknox/qlobe or this 100 language quine https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/README.md
  • mrob 10y ago
    "God made the integers, all else is the work of man." - Leopold Kronecker Mathematics is also something created by humans.
    • olavk 10y ago
      So is astronomy, but that does not make it art. Of course you can define art however you want, it just not how the word is usually used. (Unless you take it in the colloquial sense of "something to appreciate", like in "that ass is a piece of art".)
  • hx87 10y ago
    Mathematics is not a natural science. Its structure and content is obtained strictly from axioms and logic.
    • olavk 10y ago
      I didn't intend to claim it way, just using examples.
  • ouid 10y ago
    Then video games qualify. This is an article which argues that something does not satisfy the criteria for art. So when he he invokes his ability to exclude mathematics from the definition without any justification, or at least without appealing to any reasoning whatsoever, and then using that conclusion to assert that games aren't art, all he is doing is demonstrating that his essay should have been much shorter. The same unqualified assertion that applies to mathematics would apply to videogames, and he needs go no further than the thesis.
    • olavk 10y ago
      I happen to agree. Video games definitely qualify as art in my opinion. Math does not. I don't buy his argument either. But the underlying mistake is thinking "art" means "valuable and worthwhile" (and "not art" means "bad"). There is lots of crappy art.
  • NoahTheDuke 10y ago
    > Art literally means something created by humans Mathematics are created by humans. Math is the map, not the territory.
• fusiongyro 10y ago
  Later in the article, he says one of the hallmarks of art is that it is a celebration of the ineffable. Your objection seems to be that his definition of art is not sufficiently mathematical to be sensible to you. This tells me that you are more interested in reasoning about art than appreciating it. Well, ... I'm glad you enjoy math more than art. But I don't think that art needs to bow down to math by confining itself to a definition that fits your criteria.
  • ouid 10y ago
    my objection is that his definition of art appears in no part of this essay. I don't need it to be "mathematical", I just need it to exist. As for the claim that I am more interested in reasoning about art than appreciating it. Do you actually think priorities are exclusive like that? May I not both reason and appreciate? Is this not an essay which itself attempts to reason about art, should I not appeal to that in a response to the article? The argument you make against my response to the article could be equally applied to the article itself, yet you take the author's side, which seems dishonest to me.
    • Jtsummers 10y ago
      Various definitions for types of art follow in the latter half of the article. Discussions on kitsch, sublime, great, etc. Which is essential to be able to put the whole thing into context, seems to be what you want. It's right there.
    • fusiongyro 10y ago
      > my objection is that his definition of art appears in no part of this essay. I don't need it to be "mathematical", I just need it to exist. Yes, you need everything you read to be structured like a mathematical argument, so you can pick it apart. So you need a definition followed by proofs. You're annoyed that every article doesn't have this structure, especially argumentative articles like this one. You are acting as a natural language proof checker, not a person. > Do you actually think priorities are exclusive like that? May I not both reason and appreciate? I think if you bail out after a few minutes on an article for failing to supply you with the structure you demand, then yes, your priorities are basically exclusive. Now, I don't have a proof in hand for that, which I'm sure you'll fixate on. > The argument you make against my response to the article could be equally applied to the article itself, yet you take the author's side, which seems dishonest to me. I value articles over comments, especially obnoxious, entitled comments. I am not here to merely compile text and type check it. The accusation of "dishonesty" only reinforces that you are more interested in the structure of what is being said than what the words are saying. The accusation itself, what a preposterous idea, that there are some rigid rules about what I read and how I choose to respond to it which you can apply to me and constrain me with. Do you think you could berate me into agreeing with you?
• mrec 10y ago
  OK, I'll bite: yes, "Mathematics can be true, beautiful, compelling, creative, unique, etc", but those qualities are generally only discernable by other mathematicians working at a roughly comparable level. Same for code; I've talked to promising-but-junior programmers who couldn't understand at all what people meant when they talked about code being "ugly". "Art" in its various forms, on the other hand, is widely appreciated by people who are not artists, or art critics, or art dealers, or art students. (I'd exclude an awful lot of modern art from this, but that's probably a flamewar for another day.)
  • setr 10y ago
    >"Art" in its various forms, on the other hand, is widely appreciated by people who are not artists, or art critics, or art dealers, or art students. Warning: I don't know shit about the arts That's not really true. Much of the high arts is intended to be appreciated by those with sufficient background to do so. For example, when a piece makes a joke on another artist's trademarks. In Chicago, the IIT campus is mostly done by Mies; A more recent building on the campus (MTCC) was designed by Rem Koolhaas, and features Mies's iconic I-Beams. But for no real purpose as far as I can tell. I'm quite positive he did it in jest (he also placed extremely ugly victorian-style furniture made of excess metal from the construction, also I think, for humor). Of course, anyone unaware of Mies's work would entirely miss this. The building is obviously still useful even if you do not appreciate this facet, but its easy to imagine a work the ceases to be appreciable without any background. Interestingly, Russian abstract art was originally intended to avoid this; they attempted to remove reference from everything in the real world, to be purely emotional and evocative, and could thus be appreciated by even the most uninformed of persons. It was then rejected by the proletariat, interpreted as only being appreciable by those with a background they did not have; pretentious, masturbatory works only for those educated, useless artists. I imagine you're thinking more of like the realist styles, which often feature technical skill immediately appreciable; but it's not hard to see The Birth of Venus is depicting a scene, with particular emotions and characters that can only be appreciated to a lackluster degree if one has no knowledge of the mythos behind it (as I do). In the same way, near-anyone can appreciate the immediate benefit of a computer; but without sufficient background, appreciate ends at the screen. The deeper you understand the machine, the better you can appreciate the complexity underlying it.
• mrob 10y ago
  It's true that there's some aesthetic judgment involved in writing proofs, but it's heavily constrained by the problems you're trying to solve. I think this prevents it from being great art, even when it's great mathematics. It's similar to writing puns, which nobody claims are great comedy, or lipograms, which nobody claims are great literature.
  • hx87 10y ago
    Architecture, especially before the advent of reinforced concrete, is heavily constrained by mechanics, and yet few would claim that architecture cannot be great art.
  • IanCal 10y ago
    Pure maths is not particularly constrained, is it? You don't even really need to have a certain actual problem you're trying to solve. That feels like saying a book can't be great art because it's heavily constrained by the story you're trying to tell.
    • mrob 10y ago
      A book doesn't have to be heavily constrained by the story. What's the mathematical equivalent of Finnegans Wake?
      • IanCal 10y ago
        Would you accept no books "constrained" by their story as art?
        • mrob 10y ago
          I don't think there's any hard cut-off where you can say something is art or not art. But even the most formulaic genre fiction gives more freedom to the author in how they can arrange their words. English language doesn't have a formal grammar and rules are more like suggestions. But if mathematics breaks the commonly accepted rules then it's just plain wrong.
• Frondo 10y ago
  I'd be curious; can you describe the emotional reactions you've had to reading a mathematical paper? Have you experienced joy, sorrow, loneliness, kinship, heartache, lust, tenderness, guilt, hope from reading a math paper? Could you tell us which paper inspired various emotional reactions in you? Honest questions all. If you've experienced a variety of emotions from a maths paper, and can talk about your inner world in relation to such a paper, it'd go a long way to convincing me that math can be great art.