5 ms·
Mathematics is infinite.
by Koshkin 6y ago
Mathematics is infinite.
- ianmcgowan 6y agoBut asymptotic..
- postalrat 6y agoProof?
- barry-cotter 6y agoTrue but publication standards change over time. If none of Euler’s publications are “trivial” in the sense that processors will gloss over the proof during lectures that would be surprising.
- pmiller2 6y agoThat would be surprising. But, my experience has generally been that when a result of Euler comes up in class, it's more frequently preceded with "this was published by Euler but not really rigorously proven." Standards of proof were obviously different 250 years ago.
- mannykannot 6y agoIndeed, but it is done on an expanding boundary. Nevertheless, I do not agree with the spirit of GP’s point, as one could equally argue that Euler accomplished so much while working from what was, from today’s perspective, an impoverished starting point. There is a term, ‘Whig history’, which has come to epitomize the attitude of evaluating historical characters in accordance with current standards. It is not a helpful mode of analysis.
- dan-robertson 6y agoWhiggishness is just a massive problem in the history of science and mathematics. There’s so much history that sees it as inevitable as if all the contemporaries of Newton and Leibniz were desperately trying to invent the calculus if only they could figure out how to do it.
- 0-_-0 6y agoBut the edges of known math are finite