jgill

Worst case of writers' block I've ever seen.

Of course there are. I've long considered infinitesimals metaphysical objects within mathematics. Transfinite set theory seems metaphysical to me. Lik...

Not knowing the existence of unknowns can trip one up.

This caught my attention although I am not following the discussion, not in my bailiwick. I've worked with these things quite a bit in Banach spaces, ...

I understand. Don't read this one.

Wiki

Then it should discipline itself by agreeing upon a definition.

Calling metaphysics a "discipline" is quite a stretch. Here, on TPF, several philosophers have tried to interpret QE without a clue about the math tha...

When does metaphysical border on mystical? Eliminating metaphysics (which I consider impossible without severely crippling philosophy) would remove al...

The word metaphysical itself is ill-defined. This is a step further into the void.

From past posts I assume you refer to instantaneous acceleration.

That's a paradox itself. :cool:

I'm curious what you think of Schaums Outline of Logic. I found math outlines that worked well in several courses I taught. Would you recommend this f...

Wagner, not wigner

Good question. I was much younger and I think an associate professor at the time, and my interests then might not have been my interests now - hard to...

I missed a golden opportunity years ago to exchange letters with Wigner or talk with him. My ex-wife's father, who lived in Montana, was a Hungarian a...

The basic observation piece being subject to probability seems crucial. Once the superposition is resolved it would seem that it is like the coin spli...

The statement of a theorem is a way of understanding what has been proved. In modern abstract mathematics, however, one would need advanced knowledge ...

If a theorem is "true", then it is so subject to foundational axioms. Changing the axioms could change the designation of "true". "True" means derivab...

Well, yes. If God spoke to me saying, THIS THEOREM IS TRUE, then that would remove a nagging uncertainty in the proof process. But it might end up mak...

Well, I might think, I'll use mathematical induction and see where that goes. And it might work, or not. I can essentially do a simple proof in BASIC ...

Virtually any mathematical conjecture would be of this type. When I compose a possible theorem I'm not certain about the argument I will ultimately us...

And "traditional" mathematics. But with over 26,000 topics in math it's getting harder to pigeonhole.

I haven't kept up here, so this may have been discussed upthread. As a child during and after WWII I identified with Cowboys in games of Cowboys and I...

A system that includes fossils, renewables, recycling is a possible answer. A bit like where we are now, but looked at as a system, not individual com...

Look into this box of apples. They are all Delicious apples, a kind of apple. Now look closely at each one after carefully counting them - there are 2...

The Schrödinger equation is linear and so linear combinations of solutions are also solutions. This is the superposition concept in its mathematical g...

I wish. Apart from the over abundance of guns in the US is the fact that those guns can last for many generations. It's not like your TV set wearing o...

:up:

Surprised to see this thread resurrected. Yes, the math and physics definition of ergodic is technical about averages. Lem used this term to imply ave...

A miracle. We are caught in a whirlpool of violence in which gang members are arrested for gun crimes, then processed and released back into the stree...

What does that have to do with fishing?

There's something fishy about entanglement. Years ago, as a kid fishing in the gulf of Mexico I would experience it often. Why did Einstein make such ...

Your perspective.

What I see on TPF sometimes is a circular argument beginning with hypotheses and ending with hypotheses.

:cool:

Yes, but as you say it makes the supernatural implausible. I can't see where this discussion is going.

Both electrical and chemical.

:up:

Lack of objective evidence - non anecdotal - I would say. But it's pleasant to think of ectoplasm slowly oozing from the aether.

You, as Creator of your World, have a chunk of modelling clay in front of you. You think, I must have a vase, so you carefully mold the clay into a va...

I was a professor of mathematics at a state university for a number of years, but as a graduate student there were courses I didn't like and had to pu...

Gluing schemes in mathematics I thought I remembered something about gluing in math, so I looked it up. Maybe not precisely what you ask, but interest...

Applied linguistics.

I gave him as an example of someone who has tried in a fairly sophisticated way to do something new in philosophy related to science, not as one who h...

Thanks for your summary. What he did and didn't do makes more sense now. :up:

Yes. Lines of demarcation are vague.

If you are speaking of philosophers of mathematics I suspect most if not all are conversant with this sort of symbolism. I doubt many read this forum.

Yes, you are correct. It's easy to get deflected into science or math. In any event you and I are talking past one another, so I'll cool it. :cool:

I wasn't familiar with the math he used but it looked OK as far as I got. Hillary (or a previous incarnation) is a physicist and seemed to think there...