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I think you missed Dijkstra's point. Why don't we use "natural language" to reason about mathematics, physics, logic, or even the structure of language itself?
by markbnj 12y ago
I think you missed Dijkstra's point. Why don't we use "natural language" to reason about mathematics, physics, logic, or even the structure of language itself?
- tim333 12y agoPossibly. We do in fact use natural language to reason about mathematics and physics - if you look at any text book it's about 90% english words and 10% equations. But I'll give you the equations are important and powerful in math and physics but I'd argue less so in computer programming.
- the_af 12y ago@tim333 Dijstra was arguing that mathematics was actually held back until mathematicians decided to embrace a formal system to describe it.
- JabavuAdams 12y agoActually, we do all of these things. Why do proofs have commentary, and why do we have physics text books?