vector based navigation

music

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speech

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(Louis Zukofsky, A 12)

Asked Albert who introduced relativity
“And what is the formula for success?”
“X=work, y=play, Z=keep your mouth shut.”

(Louis Zukofsky, A 6)

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Mathematics is always about Order, and Order is always political. Hence, the politics of mathematics are always with us.

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Mathematicians sense it too. The introduction of computers into mathematics has introduced a new materialist challenge into higher mathematics. Can a machine made of wires and silicon chips be allowed in the aetherial world of abstract mathematics? Are proofs accomplished by such material means legitimate? Is mathematics, the realm of pure unadulterated reason, compromised by the brute calculating power of these material beings?

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Ingrid Wiener: Erste Schritte auf dem Weg zu Bayes # 7, Gobelin 2007, 34×50cm nach Blei- und Filzstiftnotizen auf DIN A4

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And yet, the politics of mathematics are still with us, bubbling beneath the surface. We sense it in the rule of professional “experts,” champions of order and necessity, who are forever seeking to present their claim in a mathematical mantle. They hope to infuse their arguments with a touch of mathematics’ aura of inevitability. We also sense it in the indifference, and even hostility towards mathematics of students and citizens. They refuse to engage with a field that will impose it absolute truths upon them, and never ask for their considered opinion. We see it in the schools, in the repeated struggles between “new math” and “old math” teaching methods, which map closely onto the political divisions between Left and Right.

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Has mathematics today become depoliticized? To some extent, surely. Since the 19^th century mathematics has dissociated itself from the world, creating a universe of wonders all to itself. Absolute universal and necessary truths may still rule in this alternate reality, but they have only tangential bearing on the realities of the world as we know it. We are safe from the tyranny of mathematics, and it is safe from our materialist heresies.

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