Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Mathematics and Physics












Pi-Guy said...

I'm not sure the Fourier argument is all that convincing to me. I think that mathematicians simply got to a point where they understood that mathematical systems needn't be analogous to realistic systems; that they could be studied and worked on as pure hypotheses with no pretense that they were discovering something about the real world. Physicists (at least the good ones) can never do that, because their whole endeavor is anchored to empiricism.

It's like what happened with artists: at some point they felt free to pursue works of high abstraction, leaving orthodox photography to record the real world with fidelity.

Googolplex Ideas! said...

I don't think it was just Fourier. The split was imminent because both the fields have become so enormous that it is now humanely not possible to excel in both.