jml@cs.strath.ac.uk (Joseph McLean) (11/11/86)
> >>>>Mathematics doesn't win wars >>>False >> >>How so ? I seem to recall that the French were soundly defeated in a >>little battle at Waterloo.They didn't do particularly well in >>Egypt or Russia either.The fact that they had arguably 8 of the 10 >>best mathematicians of the age didn't do them any good here. > >Uh, this is sci.math. So let's understand this dispute symbolically. > >///(For all wars w) (mathematics did not win w) >//False, ie, (There exists war w) (mathematics did win war w) >/Huh? After all, (There exists war w) (mathematics did not win w) > >I see why jml calls himself the mad mathematician, if he likes to mix up >his universal and existential quantifiers so freely. > >The canonical example of a witness for Tom Tedrick's existential quan- >tifier is, of course, WWII. > >ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 > > May I reply ? Thank you. My statement that mathematics doesn't win wars (given the example of the French revolution) means that there exists a war which mathematics didn't win.Pretty straightforward I think.How can I be said to mean that for all wars,mathematics doesn't win wars? After all I do know of examples to the contrary. Thus when my statement was accused of falsehood,the new statement meant that for all wars,mathematics wins wars,which is indubitably wrong. Maybe I should have said: Superior mathematics is no guarantee of victory in armed conflict. However I wanted to be succinct and to the point. Apologies if I was misunderstood. jml,the hopefully-vindicated (though probably not)-mathematician.