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What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics? A naive Quora question gets a remarkably long, thorough answer from an anonymous respondent. The answer cites, among many other things, Tim Gowers's influential essay "The Two Cultures of Mathematics," about the tension between problem-solving and theory-building. Related: Terry Tao asks "Does one have to be a genius to do maths?" (Spoiler: he says no.)
posted by escabeche on Dec 24, 2011 - 56 comments

"Perhaps twenty or thirty people in England may be expected to read this book." G.H. Hardy's review of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, published in the Times Literary Supplement 100 years ago last week. "The time has passed when a philosopher can afford to be ignorant of mathematics, and a little perseverance will be well rewarded. It will be something to learn how many of the spectres that have haunted philosophers modern mathematics has finally laid to rest."
posted by escabeche on Sep 12, 2011 - 29 comments

Philosophical Referee Symbols.
posted by escabeche on Apr 19, 2011 - 23 comments

"Only if the opposing team can prove that the material world of our perceptions is real, and not a hallucination, do they earn the right to have their arguments considered on their merits." High school debate used to be the province of fast talkers with notecards full of facts and figures -- until literary theory got into the act. Kritik, a family of tactics derived from au courant Continental thinkers like Foucault, Zizek, Spivak (and old favorites like Nietzsche and Heidegger) aims not merely to counter the opposing team's arguments but to expose them as manifestations of implicit oppressive paradigms. Kritik was pioneered in the early 1990s by Ft. Hays State University debate coach Bill Shanahan (who later experimented with another novel tactic by mooning a rival debate coach in a college meet.) [more inside]
posted by escabeche on Jun 7, 2010 - 128 comments