Re: Quote by Knuth

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2021-07-15, at 08:21, Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:

>> Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2021 at 6:06 PM
>> From: "Marcin Borkowski" <mbork@mbork.pl>
>> To: "Emanuel Berg" <moasenwood@zoho.eu>
>> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
>> Subject: Re: Quote by Knuth
>>
>>
>> On 2021-07-15, at 00:53, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text 
>> editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>> > But without the symbolic notation it isn't really math, is it,
>> > because the natural language, no matter how careful one is,
>> > can still be misinterpreted, interpreted in several ways, it
>> > can be translated, made fun of ...
>>
>> Interesting, but false.  What Greeks did was most certainly mathematics
>> even if they had little to none symbolism.
>
> We don't do greek mathematics anymore.  It was mainly geometric, which became
> an ingrained technique that stall development until Liebniz introduced some 
> useful
> notation.  Magneto-Hydro-Dynamics needs compact notation.  Inverse Estimation
> is another example.

Well, don't we do the very same mathematics as ancient Greeks did, only
expressing it in a different language?  (And of course, we now know
more, since our knowledge grows.  OTOH, many things in contemporary
mathematics are not very trustworthy due to the complexity and high
probability of errors.)

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl