
Mathematics as a Cultural Force - ColinWright
https://longreads.com/2019/09/27/mathematics-as-a-cultural-force/
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goodmachine
One can see why historians like to describe mathematics in terms of second-
order philosophical, cultural, socio-political effects (a clockwork universe,
a rationalist garden, etc) but surely this is putting the cart before the
horse: the biggest impact of mathematics is in the first-order effects:
mathematics made solid, as it were, in architecture, engineering and
technology in general - much more so than the surrounding aesthetics.

I guess I'm just not buying tendentious (and unprovable) connections between
advances in geometry and reshaping of the social order. That said, I will
check out the book.

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superpermutat0r
Mathematics was nowhere in architecture, engineering or technology before the
renaissance. Heuristics, written or taught were the only things used. There
were no formulas, even geometry, that was invented BC had no place in
architecture of 13th century.

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eternalban
Euro-centric historic chauvinism never ceases to amaze. It is always worth a
chuckle to hear for example how "Rome conquered the known world" and your _bon
mot_ here how "Mathematics was nowhere in architecture, engineering or
technology before the renaissance." It is truly astounding.

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CMCDragonkai
A very small known world. Smaller than most large empires in land area.

~~~
eternalban
It's not merely that. It is the willful disregard for the fact that Rome
itself was very much aware of Parthian and Sassanid Persia, India, and China.
An entire city in Iran was built by Roman prisoners of war!

I sometimes wonder if the persistence of this willful disregard, as a
pedagogical factor, plays a role in current geopolitical matters which finds
the West in disarray as to how to respond to the reemergence of the "unknown
world".

~~~
sifar
Even before Rome, these regions were not unknown. The Greeks even fought them,
settled there.

One of my personal long term topics[1] to research is how these two hitherto
separate schools of thought have influenced each other. The western and the
oriental thought may have a common genesis.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-
Buddhism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism)

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MAXPOOL
Logic is usually considered as a part of philosophy. There are people in
philosophy departments studying formal logic. I think all formal sciences
should be considered as part of philosophy because they provide tools and
language for the deepest ideas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_formal_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_formal_science)

~~~
ColinWright
Not in my experience. All the mathematics departments with which I've been
associated have had logicians.

Perhaps philosophy departments also have logicians, and perhaps they take
different approaches, but certainly "Logic" is considered a sub-discipline of
mathematics.

~~~
buckminster
When I studied maths at Oxford the foundations of logic course was taught by
the philosophy department. And the university offers a maths and philosophy
course. I think it's fair to say that logic is where maths meets philosophy.

~~~
ColinWright
When I studied maths at Cambridge, it was part of the DPMMS, the Department of
Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics.

It still is:

[https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/part-
iii/prospective/pr...](https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/part-
iii/prospective/preparation/resources/logic)

The same was true when I was working at the University of Manchester:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Mathematics,_Univers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Mathematics,_University_of_Manchester#Research)

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lidHanteyk
It's interesting that they overlook a similar shift in both mathematics and
politics in the 1930s. It was at that time that mathematicians showed that
truth is undefinable and no finite formal system can encapsulate all of
arithmetic.

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ngcc_hk
All 3 books are interesting

