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Re: [xmca] Where is thinking



I've never heard this discussed before Ed. Very interesting. How can you explain to someone the beauty of Goedel's proof of his Undecidability Theorem? Like with Euler's equation and so on, it is one thing to give the "easy" explanation which appeals to intuition, but the mathematical formalism is something else again. How do you communicate the beauty of these symbolic practices, other than taking people through years of routinized practice exercises?

Andy

Ed Wall wrote:
Martin and Andy

This is interesting (and an experience I had also with Shrodinger's wave equation for a hydrogen atom although I was lured away by education) as I am trying with some of my students (who, so they believe, have neither strong interests or abilities in mathematics - elementary school teachers presently or on the way) to develop a sense of beauty within mathematics. Part of this is because their students do have sort of a sense and part of this is because I have been wondering if I can crank it up a notch (not all the way to tensor algebra - smile) and also, partially negate, their, these teachers, abominable mathematical experiences. I have begun to have a little success as without coaching (and an hour or so thinking, talking, and working) they seem to be able to distinguish on their own between two or so acceptable proofs - ones they, for the most part, understand and generate - as to the one that somehow is elegant (whatever that means although I happen to agree with their choice). Assuming that taste is cultural (although there are ways in which mathematics, one might say, isn't. I don't mean by this Platonic), I've been sort of bemused by the response. Anyway, it seems that Vygotsky would have been interested in 'intellectual' taste.

Ed

On Apr 24, 2009, at 5:20 PM, Martin Packer wrote:

As an undergraduate I was in a class in which we solved Shrodinger's wave
equation for a hydrogen atom (the simplest case, and I think the only
salvable one) using tensor notation. I can confirm that it is beautiful
mathematics, and it almost prevented me from becoming a psychologist.

Martin


On 4/23/09 10:32 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

:) Yes, Ed, I found tensor calculus a genuine thing of
beauty. After learning about e^ip=-1 a couple of years
earlier only ijGlm=0 could top it (excuse lack of sub- and
superscripts and Greek letters). But it is not so much the
mathematics that is at issue I think, when someone says
"relativity is simple" but just how the mathematics is
related to experience. Einstein himself wrote an
introduction to the Special Theory which does the whole
thing up to the variation of length with relative speed,
without using mathematics. But tensors are a mathematics
whose object is not physical relations, but differential
equations. That's tricky!

Any way, it's a long time ago for me too!

Andy



e^ip means the base of natural logatrithms raised to the
power of the square root of minus one times the ratio of the
 diameter to the circumference of a circle, and it = -1
Beautiful.
In ijGlm , G is a tensor of space-time, ij are subscripts
and lm are superscripts. But I may have that wrong!

Ed Wall wrote:
Andy

      It has been quite awhile since I have taught a course in
special/general relativity (about 20 years); however, the tensor
calculus is, I thought then, a nice way to go about it and brings some
things to light that are important on the way to general relativity.
Tensor algebra is actually somewhat straightforward by the way, but that
is a matter of opinion. However, all of this has now become perhaps a
bit off topic (smile) and you are correct that special relativity does
not, at a certain level of understanding, require manipulation of tensors.

Ed

On Apr 22, 2009, at 10:40 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

Yes and No. I was using the word "metaphysics" in the way Pragmatists
use it. Strictly speaking, of course, *all* thinking contains
metaphysical assumptions. So in that you and Kuhn are right and I was
wrong.

Perhaps I could stop using the word Metaphysics to mean the
reification of thought forms into independently existing substances,
and others stop using the word Ontology to refer to personal identity
formation? :)

But I disagree with you about your Kantian conclusion that "science is
a purely logical". It was this Kantian belief (along with Euclid) that
was overthrown by Einstein. The Logical positivists were wrong of
course, because they interpreted the subject in Kantian terms, as an
individual person and their private psyche having direct access to
eternal reason.

Interstingly Einstein disagreed with Bridgman. Einstein said that
within the context of a consistent theory, not every entity in the
theory has to be subject to an operational definition. Einstein right,
Bridgman wrong. But I think Bridgman got the right idea nonetheless.

Where Hegel and you are wrong, I believe, is the presumption that we
are at the end of history (neither of you claim that of course, but it
is a valid implication in both cases.) If the nature of time and space
can be deduced completely from a critique of the cultural practices at
any given time, e.g. in 1807 before the Michaelson-Morley experiment
was possible, then obviously the practices whose critique will allow
the Special Theory of Relativity to be deduced "by logic" i.e.,
critique of practice, are impossible. If "science is a purely logical"
then that presumes that no further significant developments in social
practices (such as the Michelson-Morlet experiment) can be made.

BTW Ed, I think we have to treat the Special Theory and the General
Theory differently. There is absolutely nothing simple about the
general theory and its tensor calculus!

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
Oh Andy, I'm going to have to disagree with you once again!
At least, I'm going to disagree if by your statement here you mean to
say
that Einstein was avoiding metaphysics. That was the interpretation the
logical positivists made, arguing that Einstein had exposed the fact
Newtonian physics had hidden metaphysical assumptions, but that, with
his
operational definitions (Bridgman's term, but his ilustrations were from
Einstein), Einstein had finally showed that science was a purely
logical (or
if you prefer practical) activity, free from metaphysics. What a mess
that
has led us into!
I'm on Kuhn's side on this issue: every scientific paradigm has
metaphysical
assumptions embedded in its practices. So we don't have metaphysics
on the
one hand and practice on the other. We have alternative kinds of
scientific
practice, each with their metaphysical assumptions. (The metaphysics of
Einsteinian physics include the assumption that space is something
that can
be curved by a mass, for example.) The merits of each of the
alternatives is
what scientists spend their careers hotly debating. Even what
*counts* as
metaphysics is different from one paradigm to another.
But that's probably what you meant!  :)
Martin
On 4/22/09 8:17 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
All Einstein did was, instead of regarding time and space as
metaphysical entities existing independently of human
practice, he closely examined the practice of measuring time
and distance. That's all.
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
From Erythrós Press and Media <http://www.erythrospress.com/>.

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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
From Erythrós Press and Media <http://www.erythrospress.com/>.

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