On a point of business, dear reader, I recently found myself on the homepage of one Peter Gacs. This was, as it turns out, quite a timely visit. I had found myself, you see, at something of a spiritual impasse in my life. I mean, we've all heard the savage barbs in our time about mathematics research being a waste of time and having no relation to the "real" world.... and, well, I suppose we've learned to live with them2. What was beginning to bother me, brothers and sisters, was this gnawing suspicion in the back of my mind that it also had no relation to the "not so real" world, or possibly "realer than real" world (depending on your point of view). The supernatural world. The spiritual world. I mean, sure, maths can teach you how to cheat at cards and pull chicks at parties .... but what has it got to say about witchcraft, magic and saving my immortal soul? I was beginning, com padre, with a deep and abiding sorrow to take the view that the answer to this question was "zilch". My interest was piqued, however, by the list of online publications of Mr Gacs which included the following titles: The Angel Wins, Clairvoyant Scheduling of Random Walks, The Clairvoyant Demon has a Hard Task3. Sadly, however, these just turned out to be cool titles. There were no concrete instructions to be found on how to actually summon such a clairvoyant demon. Via a tantalizing link on the same page, however, one learns that maths and physics can help you find god and rescue your immortal soul after all.
Yay team nerd!!!!!
1Yeah, it occurs to me that this title makes the post sound a lot more interesting than it really is......
2Being mathematicians, we always come up with the wittiest of responses. "Your mum's pointless" I replied once. "Yeah, well ..... QUICK!!!! LOOK!!! BEHIND YOU!!!" is another favorite. Well, actually, Busty's wasn't bad.
3 Also on the list we find On playing "twenty questions" with a Liar. Another cool title, but I couldn't work it in to the current post angle, unfortunately.
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Seriously, though, you have to check out the diagrams on that link.... I'm thinking figure 12 is my favourite at this point, but it's a competitive category.......
I knew this day would come. That is, the day when Fitz puts a footnote in the title of his blog post. Good for you Fitz, don't wait until you're writing the main text before digressing.
As for responses to the accusation that mathematics is pointless, I have many answers of your ilk. My favourite though is due to Richard Feynman (although he mentions physics, you could easily substitute mathematics for physics).
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
I feel confident that that's about the only way in which physics is like sex.....
Further, I suspect that that quote came about as the conclusion of Feynman tossing and turning about in bed at night for years thinking "there must be some way in which physics is like sex, there MUST be some way ....."
There is a paper on the arXiv somewhere where there's a footnote for the author list. It says something like, "Author ABC would prefer the order of authors to be DEF, ABC, GHI, but author GHI insisted on alphabetical ordering."
Something like that, anyway. I'll try to dig it up later, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to find it. I can't remember what the paper was about.
I was going to click on the links, however just in time I stopped myself as I realised I would find them boring.
Instead, I went and had sex.
Yeah, the day Tom showed me how to write footnotes in tex was quite a happy one.
Adriana: I should perhaps point out that, unlike most of my blog posts, those links DO have pictures.
I find it more likely that the first time Feynman had sex he said "Wow! Sex is like physics!"
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