eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (07/31/87)
In article <2399@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes: > Isn't that begging the question? What question? Beauty tends to be a good heuristic for what's *interesting* in pure mathematics, but it doesn't tell you what's true. In other fields the connection is even more tenuous. **PERSONAL OPINION BEGINS** What's really going on here is that we have a cultural prejudice that beautiful things are 'true' and vv. which we inherited from a particular school of Greek philosophers that was dominant in the city that happened to win the Aegean wars, so we edit our experience to conform to it. If the Ionians had won, this nonsense would have been in the dustbin of history for 2000 years. The cognitive experience from which these guys were overgeneralizing is that when you have an intuitive grasp on a complex system (like, say, the workings of a clepsydra in their day or a computer in ours), thinking about it is pleasurable (hence 'beautiful'). So the tendency to think "what's beautiful is more likely to be true" is a typical-for-philosophically-naive-Westerners misprojection of "I'm more likely to be able to solve problems with complexity I can grasp". Most other cultures don't make this mistake as much (but they've got characteristic blind spots of their own). **OPINION ENDS** >>we throw away a lot of information in making the exceedingly complex mapping >>from, say, falling cannonballs to F=ma. > >But why is the exceedingly complex mapping so beautiful? F=ma is not complex; >on the contrary it is very simple. awe inspiringly, beautifully, simple. See above. It's the confirmation-by-experience that *simple* F=ma can be used to predict the *complex* behavior of the falling rock that's the real "knowledge" here; F=ma is just marks on paper. Mathematics by itself is a zero-content system, both literally and figuratively meaningless (but fun!). The mapping is 'beautiful' only because it's now part of your intuition; was it 'beautiful' to you while you were struggling to understand dx/dt? No? I didn't think so...and it remains un-`beautiful' to people who don't grok elementary physics at least in Newtonian approximation. -- Eric S. Raymond UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
myers@tybalt.caltech.edu (Bob Myers) (08/09/87)
In article <120@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > It's the confirmation-by-experience that *simple* F=ma can be used >to predict the *complex* behavior of the falling rock that's the real >"knowledge" here; F=ma is just marks on paper. Mathematics by itself is a >zero-content system, both literally and figuratively meaningless (but fun!). >The mapping is 'beautiful' only because it's now part of your intuition; was >it 'beautiful' to you while you were struggling to understand dx/dt? Yes, actually. You don't need to completely understand the mathematics to appreciate the beauty. All you need is an intuitive understanding. I don't understand General Relativity, but I can appreciate the beauty of a geometrical interpretation of gravity. >No? I didn't think so...and it remains un-`beautiful' to people who don't >grok elementary physics at least in Newtonian approximation. Only if they don't understand what the symbols stand for on any level. It's not terribly hard to explain F=ma on an intuitive level. Sure, as long as it's just marks on a piece of paper, it's not beautiful. (Calligraphy aside! :-) ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well if that's the best there is Then I won't buy it Well if that's the only game Then I won't play Bob Myers myers@tybalt.caltech.edu {rutgers,amdahl}!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!myers
laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) (08/09/87)
In article <120@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >The mapping is 'beautiful' only because it's now part of your intuition; was >it 'beautiful' to you while you were struggling to understand dx/dt? > >No? I didn't think so...and it remains un-`beautiful' to people who don't >grok elementary physics at least in Newtonian approximation. Hmm. My intuition runs strongly along the dx/dt lines, and so that wasn't a struggle. I think, however, that you believe that ``beauty'' is a quality that must be immediately obvious to everyone. People have to learn to appreciate art and music as well. What is the difference? -- (C) Copyright 1987 Laura Creighton - you may redistribute only if your recipients may. ``One must pay dearly for immortality: one has to die several times while alive.'' -- Nietzsche Laura Creighton ihnp4!hoptoad!laura utzoo!hoptoad!laura sun!hoptoad!laura
janw@inmet.UUCP (08/28/87)
[sarge@thirdi.UUCP ] >I guess the question is whether there *is* any legitimate cri- >terion for distinguishing between religion and philosophy. If >not, then linguistic analysis is a form of religion and Jim >Jones' cult was a form of philosophical society. To me it always >seemed that the use of reason and logic distinguished the two, >but I'm willing to bow to someone else's notion if there is a >better criterion for separating them. I seem to remember that Jim Jones's cult was actually quite secu- lar: a political movement and a utopian commune posing as reli- gion to get some breaks; they did not believe in any deity. As- suming that's so - and if not, substituting some other group - let's apply the criterion of reason and logic. Suppose it fails. Does the movement's unreasonableness qualify it as a religion? Is any blind faith, however secular, religious? And is theology (often logical and rational in its methods) just a branch of philosophy? So where's the boundary between religion and philosophy? I don't know; both try to make sense of the universe and the human condi- tion. Religion tends to be more personal and more emotional; but it is a difference of degree and of style. Most important dis- tinctions cut across both religion and philosophy: e.g., dogma- tism vs. independent inquiry; mysticism vs. rationalism; optimism vs. pessimism; theism as against deism, pantheism, atheism and agnosticism. A comprehensive, emotionally satisfying philosophical worldview, imbuing a community of followers - such as Marxism, Objectivism or Buddhism - has the properties of a religion, and, in the case of Buddhism, has acquired the name, too. Lucretius expounds his materialism with a truly religious rapture, and speaks of Epi- curus as one does of a prophet and a savior. True, Epicureanism never grew into an organized religion, but Stoicism, Cynicism and Platonism, in a way, did - they were incorporated into Chris- tianity. Jan Wasile, A f