leichter (05/17/82)
I recently ran into the following quote from the preface of C.P. Snow's "The Search" (2nd ed., Schribner, NY 1958 pp. 203-209) [I found the quote in a book review in the Bulletin of the AMS, and have copied both it and the reference from there...] "There is just one basic difficulty. All children have a dash of the scientist in them. Watch any bright child if you tell him about the stars or atoms or dinosaurs. He will want to find out some more. The urge to investigate, which is the scientific urge, isn't anything very special or academic. It is one of the most human things about us. In that sense, as I said, all children are scientists. But all children are not mathematicians, and that is the core of the difficulty. I don't know how many people are mathematically blind to the extent that some of us are tone deaf, but I suspect a larger proportion than the educational psychologists usually allow. Thinking of twenty acquaintances, who have all done pretty well in various sorts of intellectual life, I should say that at least five were, if not mathematically blind, at least grossly deficient in the mathematical sense. That means that though, sensibly educated, they could have got a good working idea of how physical science goes about its business, they would never have reached the fundamental concepts. I suggest we have got to accept the fact that, for a lot of people of high intelligence and imagination, this is as near as they are going to come to the real stuff. It is much better than nothing, but there are limits, and it is just as well to be clear-sighted about them in advance." -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter @ yale