November 14, 2016 Monday
Bedtime Story
The High Priests of Mathematics
The High Priests of Mathematics
From his schooling in Darmstadt, Cantor moved to the University of
Berlin thanks to the wealth bequeathed to him by his father.
His mentors at the University of Berlin were giants of mathematics
such as Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass and Ernst Kummer.
These men and their likes were the establishment, the so called
High Priests of the Church of Orthodox Mathematics.
Kronecker was an intuitionist in the sense that he believed
mathematics to be a product of human brain and mind not in any way related to
the objective reality of nature.
For men like him truth was anything that could be constructed out
of basic premises in contrast to the classic approach where a simple refutation
of its non-existence is considered a valid proof of its existence.
Kronecker is famous for the quotation:
“God made the integers, all else is the work of man.”
This somewhat resonates with the famous quote of Einstein who was
unable to reconcile with the uncertainties that quantum mechanics gave rise to
in the early 1900s.
“Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing.
“But an inner voice tells me that it is yet not the real thing.
“The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to
the secret of the “old one”.
“I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.”
Einstein’s inner voice turned out to be wrong.
Even the towering giants such as Kronecker and Einstein found it
very hard to grapple with uncertainties (more so in the case of mathematics
than with anything else) that is fundamentally ingrained in nature.
Karl Weierstrass who is regarded as father of the modern analysis
was deeply interested in the soundness of calculus and so ended up giving a
formal definition of continuity of function.
Cantor completed his dissertation from the University of Berlin at
the age of 22 only briefly spending a short summer at the University of
Göttingen.
Cantor eventually settled in the University of Halle, getting
rapid promotions to eventually becoming a full professor at the age of 34 (in
the year 1879).
Yet, it was much earlier when he just 29 that he had started
working on the set theory and was publishing papers that was not to the liking
of the establishment.
Before Cantor, no one took set theory very seriously.
I will try to enlist to you the basic notations of modern set
theory so that you get a hint what I am talking about.
Attempt will be made not to get too technical as then even I will
not understand what I am talking about.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night and my fellow cousin ape.
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, may I
suggest this large collection of Kids Songs:
No comments:
Post a Comment