3 ms·
Human mathematicians could become “priests to oracles.” Priests were interpreting the oracles (at least at a place like Delphi) according to the context of the
by cpard 3mo ago
Human mathematicians could become “priests to oracles.”
Priests were interpreting the oracles (at least at a place like Delphi) according to the context of the people asking the questions aka participating in politics of that ancient times.
Subjectivity was a feature and I’m not sure that fits to mathematics though.
I wonder if mathematics as a science field moves more into engineering or if a different branch will emerge that is closer to that because to the point of the article, science is about understanding not just results.
- therobots927 3mo agoHuman mathematicians could become “priests to oracles.” This is a decidedly anti-enlightenment statement.
- Verdex 3mo agoOkay .. However given the history of mathematics that's not really out of order. There's a lot of mysticism intertwined with early mathematics and it's only relatively recently that mathematics has taken the beads out of her hair, put on a business suit, and gotten to work. I mean even Galileo's, the patron saint of skepticism, job was observing the stars so that he could write horoscopes. And we see the attitude repeated even today. I work in a technical field and whenever I mention that I think type theory is kind of cool the response more often then not is for them to give me the ol' "Thank goodness for people like you, I'm just not a math person."