% is not an operator [was Re: Verbose and flexible args and kwargs syntax]

[Arnaud Delobelle]

On 14 December 2011 07:49, Eelco <hoogendoorn.eelco at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 14, 4:18 am, Steven D'Aprano <steve
> +comp.lang.pyt... at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> > They might not be willing to define it, but as soon as we programmers
>> > do, well, we did.
>>
>> > Having studied the contemporary philosophy of mathematics, their concern
>> > is probably that in their minds, mathematics is whatever some dead guy
>> > said it was, and they dont know of any dead guy ever talking about a
>> > modulus operation, so therefore it 'does not exist'.
>>
>> You've studied the contemporary philosophy of mathematics huh?
>>
>> How about studying some actual mathematics before making such absurd
>> pronouncements on the psychology of mathematicians?
>
> The philosophy was just a sidehobby to the study of actual
> mathematics; and you are right, studying their works is the best way
> to get to know them. Speaking from that vantage point, I can say with
> certainty that the vast majority of mathematicians do not have a
> coherent philosophy, and they adhere to some loosely defined form of
> platonism. Indeed that is absurd in a way. Even though you may trust
> these people to be perfectly functioning deduction machines, you
> really shouldnt expect them to give sensible answers to the question
> of which are sensible axioms to adopt. They dont have a reasoned
> answer to this, they will by and large defer to authority.

Please come down from your vantage point for a few moments and
consider how insulting your remarks are to people who have devoted
most of their intellectual energy to the study of mathematics.  So
you've studied a bit of mathematics and a bit of philosophy?  Good
start, keep working at it.

You think that every mathematician should be preoccupied with what
axioms to adopt, and why?  Mathematics is a very large field of study
and yes, some mathematicians are concerned with these issues (they are
called logicians) but for most it isn't really about axioms.
Mathematics is bigger than the axioms that we use to formalise it.
Most mathematicians do not need to care about what precise
axiomatisation underlies the mathematics that they practise because
they are thinking on a much higher level.  Just like we do not worry
about what machine language instruction actually performs each step of
the Python program we are writing.

You say that mathematicians defer to authority, but do you really
think that thousands of years of evolution and refinement in
mathematics are to be discarded lightly?  I think not.  It's good to
have original ideas, to pursue them and to believe in them, but it
would be foolish to think that they are superior to knowledge which
has been accumulated over so many generations.

You claim that mathematicians have a poor understanding of philosophy.
 It may be so for many of them, but how is this a problem?  I doesn't
prevent them from having a deep understanding of their field of
mathematics.  Do philosophers have a good understanding of
mathematics?

Cheers,

-- 
Arnaud