Science is a human activity (was: Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme)

[Cameron Laird]

In article <QAJhb.6667$dn6.5852 at newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
Andrew Dalke <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote:
>Alex Martelli:
>> would you kindly set right the guys (such as your
>> namesake) who (on c.l.lisp with copy to my mailbox but not to here) are
>> currently attacking me because, and I quote,
>> """
>> Software is a department of mathematics.
>> """
>
>And anyone who doesn't think mathematics has its own
>culture with ideas and even mistaken preferences for what
>is right and wrong should read
>
>The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Human Mind
>
>to see how Cantor's ideas of transfinite numbers (and other ideas,
>as I recall, like showing there are functions which are everywhere
>continuous and nowhere differentiable) were solidly rejected by
>most other mathematicians of his time.
>
>Mathematicians are people as well.
			.
			.
			.
And let no one assume that these are mere foibles of the
past that we moderns have overcome; mathematics remains
stunningly incoherent in what's labeled "foundations".
There's a wide, wide divergence between the intuitionism
working mathematicians practice, and the formalism they
profess.

'Good thing, too; our age enjoys the blessing of superb
mathematicians, and I'm relieved that philosophical in-
consistencies don't (appear to) slow them down.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at phaseit.net>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net