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Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

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Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#31

Post by freehorse »

zozbot234 wrote: post #17
DangitBobby wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you got that at all. The impression I got was the synthetic mathematicians were wary of applying the new "analysis" methods because lack of rigor made them question how safe and valid it was to use. > Using another set of metaphors: Analysts followed the fast flights of their feverish and uncontrolled imagination, while synthetics kept their feet on the ground. Their procedures were slow but sa…

> I don't understand how you got that at all. The word "reactionary" appears multiple times on that page, in association with either synthetic mathematics itself or the politics that's said to be closely connected to it. I'd say that's by far the most unambiguous part of my argument about this text.

Maybe because the title of the book this is a review of is “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”.

This does not mean that coordinate free geometry is reactionary per se, but considering the coordinate system as spoiling the purity of geometry is.

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#32

Post by gsf_emergency_6 »

aebtebeten wrote: post #26
pfdietz wrote: post #13

The critique of calculus as lacking in rigor goes much further back than that. Bishop Berkeley famously argued calculus was no more dependable than theology. It was only with Cauchy and the formalization of analysis in the 19th century that this issue would be put to bed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst I wonder if the issues that this essay claims came up in Italy persisted in any way. I ask that, because…

From a contemporary viewpoint, Berkeley seems to have been a bit of an edgelord in his defense of faith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone#Origin (or am I doing him an injustice and he was running with the whole Cartesian Demon thing to see just how far he could take it?) Mumford (a grand-advisee of Castelnuovo's) on the infamous school: https://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/pub/qed/archive/209

Fwiw, (exotericised)

   Accidentally self-awakened patriotic^W self-reliant cynic
Seems like it could be somewhat ticklish, and

   Accidentally self-(right-)radicalising marginally-woke
Could almost be.

Btw, JD Vance claimed his wife is his spirit animal, so if he's a racist, he is at best the kind of racist who'd find it morally imperative that animals try and become human?

PS: have you figured out what math pros would call the satirical functor? It's alright to ask your kith kin or kollegen for help :)

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#33

Post by zozbot234 »

freehorse wrote: post #31
zozbot234 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how you got that at all. The word "reactionary" appears multiple times on that page, in association with either synthetic mathematics itself or the politics that's said to be closely connected to it. I'd say that's by far the most unambiguous part of my argument about this text.

Maybe because the title of the book this is a review of is “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”. This does not mean that coordinate free geometry is reactionary per se, but considering the coordinate system as spoiling the purity of geometry is.

> considering the coordinate system as spoiling the purity

Isn't that one of the main arguments for "coordinate free" or "synthetic" anything? It's about a pursuit of elegance and increased generality, not necessarily of obnoxious real-world politics; so it seems especially weird to inherently conflate these things.

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#34

Post by freehorse »

zozbot234 wrote: post #33
freehorse wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because the title of the book this is a review of is “Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity”. This does not mean that coordinate free geometry is reactionary per se, but considering the coordinate system as spoiling the purity of geometry is.

> considering the coordinate system as spoiling the purity Isn't that one of the main arguments for "coordinate free" or "synthetic" anything? It's about a pursuit of elegance and increased generality, not necessarily of obnoxious real-world politics; so it seems especially weird to inherently conflate these things.

Depends way you look at it. In some ways, analytic geometry generalises a set of algebraic tools to geometric problems. Eg from the text

> For the analysts, this was irrelevant: algebra captured the essential relations expressed by the terms of the problem, which then served to guide the mathematician toward the solution. For the synthetics, by contrast, a solution to the original geometrical problem could only be geometrical in nature; and so, what the analysts were offering were not solutions but meaningless numbers.

> While the analysts strove for maximum generality, the synthetics argued for the specificity and locality of all mathematical methods. […] [For the synthetics] even more misleading would be to believe that there is a single universal method that can be applied to all kinds of problems.

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#35

Post by aebtebeten »

gsf_emergency_6 wrote: post #32
aebtebeten wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a contemporary viewpoint, Berkeley seems to have been a bit of an edgelord in his defense of faith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone#Origin (or am I doing him an injustice and he was running with the whole Cartesian Demon thing to see just how far he could take it?) Mumford (a grand-advisee of Castelnuovo's) on the infamous school: https://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/pub/qed/archive/209

Fwiw, (exotericised) Accidentally self-awakened patriotic^W self-reliant cynic Seems like it could be somewhat ticklish, and Accidentally self-(right-)radicalising marginally-woke Could almost be. Btw, JD Vance claimed his wife is his spirit animal, so if he's a racist, he is at best the kind of racist who'd find it morally imperative that animals try and become human? PS: have you figured out what math pros would ca…

Unless it be one of the functors from Mathematics Made Difficult (1971) I shall have to ask my kith for counsel...

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#36

Post by kazinator »

angry_octet wrote: post #30
kazinator wrote: post #25

Since the dawn of electronics, mathematics has entangled with politics indirectly, via technological change. The article describes a de facto technological change (emergence of Real Analysis), a kind of technology with many practical applications with economic implications.

Did you send this from an LLM?

Absolutely not.

Re: Naples' 1790s civil war was intensified by moral panic over Real Analysis (2023)

#37

Post by gsf_emergency_6 »

aebtebeten wrote: post #35
gsf_emergency_6 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, (exotericised) Accidentally self-awakened patriotic^W self-reliant cynic Seems like it could be somewhat ticklish, and Accidentally self-(right-)radicalising marginally-woke Could almost be. Btw, JD Vance claimed his wife is his spirit animal, so if he's a racist, he is at best the kind of racist who'd find it morally imperative that animals try and become human? PS: have you figured out what math pros would ca…

Unless it be one of the functors from Mathematics Made Difficult (1971) I shall have to ask my kith for counsel...

Short answer is no.

(Your two Cat's are presumably, "listenable now" and "listenable later"?)

Mid-answer is.. (depending on how _useful_ it appears to be ;) I'll find out which case(s) from Mumonkan that was soon enough..

Btw, Hiroyuki concluding "1% Perspiration" (apologetic to Edison?), calls himself "Ronin".. so.. Takuan or Musashi?

https://youtu.be/SoHxYBMuegE?t=2m09s

Ps: "weaponized kernel-bugs" (personal translation from preface:)

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