Awesome megapost over at Science after Sunclipse, covering many overlapping issues on the topic.
To use mathematics in the natural sciences, we first decide how we wish to represent some aspect of the world in mathematical form. We then take the diagrams and equations we’ve written and manipulate them according to logical rules, and in so doing, we try to make predictions about Nature, to anticipate what we’ll see in places we have not yet looked. If additional observations corroborate our expectations, then we’re on the right track. (It’s rarely so clean-cut as that — the process can spread across thousands of people and multiple generations of activity — but that’s the gist of it.) Several skill sets are involved: one must know how to idealize the world, and then how to work with that idealization. Remarkably enough, our schools fail to teach either skill.
Thanks for the link. I’ve been cooking this post on the back burner a fairly long while; bits and pieces have showed up in other stuff, but finally getting the whole thing out on the Intertubes feels a little like getting a poisoned thorn out of my flesh.
THis is true thanks for pointing it out.
Public education traditionally indoctrinated (lthe Balkans as alternative) and transfered basic skills to a workforce. It also sieved dross from ore prior to higher education refining the concentrate. The Department of Education is political. It consumes vast resources deferring to vermin who define truth and morality by convenience of the moment. Literacy and numeracy are heresy. Independence and originality of thought are mortal sins. Personal responsiblity threatens the State.
“Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness,” George Orwell, 1984.
A great post, hmm, ‘short essay’, by Blake, it’s worth a topic on the forum…