Sir,
You bring great insights to the forum! I know that I am very appreciative. I
read your input with zeal because I learn very much from your guidance. (01)
I understand your 3 bullets. Surely there is a difference between someone
popping up with some "green" ideas and someone purporting knowledge without
basis. I had assumed the former, but I could well have been wrong. (02)
Excellent poem - makes me laugh, but it certainly has some deep insight. Thanx. (03)
Out of curiosity, before I diverge too far from ontology, were the Bourbaki
being intentionally misleading or were they merely short on ground truth? (04)
On Jun 26, 2013, at 8:40 AM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: (05)
> On 6/26/2013 7:25 AM, Ray Martin wrote:
>> But, could we not at least be gracious?
>
> I apologize. My only excuse is that I repeated Leo's term
> "blowing smoke".
>
> But there are some practices that I find extremely annoying and
> pretentious, and I enjoy pricking the balloons when I see them:
>
> 1. Burying trivial ideas in a ton of formalism (see poem below).
>
> 2. Starting with an abstract formalism without giving any
> motivation, examples, or diagrams. The Bourbaki were very
> good mathematicians who led many lesser mathematicians
> astray by this style of writing.
>
> 3. Snarky references to historical precedents -- and getting
> them wrong.
>
> Re point #1: Paul Halmos had an excellent slogan "Make It Simple,
> and You Won’t Go Wrong." For more advice from Halmos:
>
> http://www.ams.org/notices/201106/rtx110600810p.pdf
>
> Re point #2: René Thom was a mathematician who won the Fields
> Medal (considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize), and he had
> been invited to one of the secret meetings of the Bourbaki.
> But Thom fell asleep during an extremely abstract lecture,
> and the Bourbaki did not invite him to join. But I believe
> that Thom was completely justified in falling asleep, and I
> doubt that he regretted not being invited. See
>
> http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Thom.html
>
> John
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> Poem by Henry Kautz:
>
> If your thesis is utterly vacuous,
> Use first-order predicate calculus.
> With sufficient formality,
> The sheerest banality
> Will be hailed by all as "Miraculous!"
>
> If your thesis is quite indefensible,
> Reach for semantics intensional.
> Over Montague grammar,
> Your committee will stammmer,
> Not admitting it's incomprehensible.
>
>
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