Badly Defined
This morning brought a wave of pain. I looked at the daily newspaper's letters page and found a sad missive (not even a missile) in which the author declared, "Mathematicians and engineers are, unfortunately, not known to be great creative thinkers." You can read this online, should you wish to trawl the murky waters of the Internet, somewhere along the Straits of Malacca.
In that one line, Descartes, Da Vinci, Liebniz, Newton, and perhaps another round thousand or so of the greatest ever human minds (some of who remain anonymous, and excluding another million or so who are good but not great) have been relegated to the dust-heap of misconception. Why would anyone say something like this? For a moment, I classified the incident as a 'brain-fart' — something variously defined as a moment of extreme forgetfulness or a quick-and-dirty brain output.
And then, the fingers of dawn stabbed through the fog. Ouch.
This letter-writer had probably made a mistake very similar to one which is becoming more frequent in the world of today. He had in all likelihood confused 'mathematician' with 'calculator' and 'engineer' with 'assembler' (or worse, 'maintenance drone'). He had, as far as I can imagine, committed the gross fallacy of equating a complex entity with its most obvious (but not only) descriptor. He had, it seems, done the equivalent of confusing 'leader' with 'manager' or 'footballer' with 'ball-picker'.
There are more subtle examples. I've seen 'chef' confused with 'cook' and 'historian' confused with 'someone forced to teach history by economic pressures'. At various times in my life of education, I have seen 'chemist' confused with 'stink-maker' and 'student' treated as 'multi-purpose course-taking prestige-multiplying worker unit'.
Then again, there are also reverse examples. Some people are indeed only managers, and are thought of as leaders when they are not. Some are indeed only workers with numbers, not mathematicians. Some are largely test-tube washers, not scientists (well, some are test-tube breakers as well). And some students think they exist to memorise, when they ought to remember they think to exist (not, of course, 'exist to think').
All this showcases the need for careful exploration of definitions. What is a scientist? Where are the heroes? Which are the terrorists? How can we know? Sometimes, usage changes with time (for example, 'computer' once meant a person who does computations). Sometimes, usage broadens to make a term less useful (everyone's a hero nowadays). And sometimes, it is the studied incomprehension of the majority that irritates the actual users of a key term — remember, 'infinity' isn't just a very large number.
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of the age?" says St Paul in the first epistle to the Corinthians, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" Sometimes, sadly, one has to be honest in replying that it is the wisdom of the world that makes itself foolish. There are those who will essay the broad, bold sweep of history; there are those among these who will fall short and leave debris to be swept away. That is why the conscientious writer must examine his own work, edit it well, proof it for honesty and compassion, and hope that it retains some style.
In that one line, Descartes, Da Vinci, Liebniz, Newton, and perhaps another round thousand or so of the greatest ever human minds (some of who remain anonymous, and excluding another million or so who are good but not great) have been relegated to the dust-heap of misconception. Why would anyone say something like this? For a moment, I classified the incident as a 'brain-fart' — something variously defined as a moment of extreme forgetfulness or a quick-and-dirty brain output.
And then, the fingers of dawn stabbed through the fog. Ouch.
This letter-writer had probably made a mistake very similar to one which is becoming more frequent in the world of today. He had in all likelihood confused 'mathematician' with 'calculator' and 'engineer' with 'assembler' (or worse, 'maintenance drone'). He had, as far as I can imagine, committed the gross fallacy of equating a complex entity with its most obvious (but not only) descriptor. He had, it seems, done the equivalent of confusing 'leader' with 'manager' or 'footballer' with 'ball-picker'.
There are more subtle examples. I've seen 'chef' confused with 'cook' and 'historian' confused with 'someone forced to teach history by economic pressures'. At various times in my life of education, I have seen 'chemist' confused with 'stink-maker' and 'student' treated as 'multi-purpose course-taking prestige-multiplying worker unit'.
Then again, there are also reverse examples. Some people are indeed only managers, and are thought of as leaders when they are not. Some are indeed only workers with numbers, not mathematicians. Some are largely test-tube washers, not scientists (well, some are test-tube breakers as well). And some students think they exist to memorise, when they ought to remember they think to exist (not, of course, 'exist to think').
All this showcases the need for careful exploration of definitions. What is a scientist? Where are the heroes? Which are the terrorists? How can we know? Sometimes, usage changes with time (for example, 'computer' once meant a person who does computations). Sometimes, usage broadens to make a term less useful (everyone's a hero nowadays). And sometimes, it is the studied incomprehension of the majority that irritates the actual users of a key term — remember, 'infinity' isn't just a very large number.
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of the age?" says St Paul in the first epistle to the Corinthians, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" Sometimes, sadly, one has to be honest in replying that it is the wisdom of the world that makes itself foolish. There are those who will essay the broad, bold sweep of history; there are those among these who will fall short and leave debris to be swept away. That is why the conscientious writer must examine his own work, edit it well, proof it for honesty and compassion, and hope that it retains some style.
etched with acid at 4:19:00 pm
5 Comments:
or test-tube washer with r & d scientist.
or those who will be made asses by the broad sweep of history
Hi Sir!
In the times of Descartes, Da Vinci, and all the other people you named, it was a lot more common to dabble in several professions rather than focusing on one particular field of work. Therefore, many of the famous people you've named as examples of outstanding thinkers (and mathematicians) were not most well-known for their contributions to mathematics, relative to their philosophy, arts and whatnot. When the writer carelessly penned down such a claim, I'm sure he didn't have such great people in mind.
My biggest counterexample to such a claim would actually be Lewis Carroll, because he, a mathematician, wrote one of the greatest children's books of our time. (: He must have exercised significant amounts of creativity to think of such random and nonsensical events to put in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and, even more impressively, weave it into a somehow rather coherent story.
But I digress. I guess that while this assumption that mathematicians and engineers are uncreative and don't think is unfounded, the reasons behind making such a statement is rather, I find, understandable. In our time people are getting increasingly specialised, until all mathematicians do is, well, do mathematics. They're not trained to think outside of manipulating numbers, and they probably only use their brain for other issues if they so choose.
Sadly, unless they've been taught to love thinking, they wouldn't.
Oh man what am I saying. It's 5.44AM. Snore.
Heh, I'm sure Descartes and Liebniz were primarily thought of as mathematicians. Newton is an exception. He was a true polymath, master of the Mint, sorcerer, alchemist, physicist and co-discoverer of the calculus. A bit like da Vinci.
Evariste Galois.
He only formally studied advanced mathematics for four years, but discovered a whole bunch of theorems, created Galois Group Theory, and then got intrigued in republicanism, made himself an enemy of the king, fell in love with a femme fatale by a secret police scheme, and died in a duel at the age of twenty.
How's that for a creative life?
And I echo your sentiments. Sometimes getting picky about semantics and a proper definition has to be done, or otherwise an unfortunate trend continues.
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