weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Wimpy Math Grad Student) (07/20/86)
Followups are directed to net.rumor, where this originated. >While such laws [pi==whatever] are moronic, let's not forget the crea- >tionists' law that was passed in Arkansas, [...] "land of the ignorant". Actually, the creationists are not alone. Samuel Dicks, a professor of medieval history at Emporia State University, has founded the Institute for Pi Research, located at 617 Exchange Street/Emporia KS 66801. Their plan is to put God back into mathematics. Dicks blames much of modern society's woes on the Godless pi, which he says is "an atheistic concept promoted by secular humanists. To think that God in his infinite wisdom would create something as messy as this (3.14 and so on) is a monstrous thought." They believe that ethical relativism, "the most evil of modern moral philosophies", can be traced directly to the arbitrariness of axiom systems as used by modern mathematics. The institute has produced a vid- eotape promoting its views, and has sent letters to various Midwestern state legislatures asking for equal time in schools for the Biblical val- ue of pi. According to Loren Pennington, an economic historian, their next goal "is to replace the insidious humanistic meter with the Biblic- al cubit." ucbvax!brahms!weemba Wimpy Grad Student/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720