It was nice to find the following page of essays by Gabriel Stolzenberg:

http://math.bu.edu/people/nk/rr/

I've read a couple of them, and they were just what the doctor ordered as a remedy against the vitriol I found in the Dawkins review.

This is a long post; I apologize, but I am annoyed.  I was re-reading Richard Dawkins's review of  Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont  (this is all from the 1990s --- see Science Wars and Sokal Affair) and it just ticked me off. In particular, the following couple of paragraphs:

The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is ( Read more... )

Gonna meet

( Read more... )

Reviews of Arnold Schoenberg (by Charles Rosen) and Under the Volcano by Malcom Lowry have been posted on Doug's site:

http://www.dougshaw.com/dsbb/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=14

It caused a severe case of chuckling over here...

http://www.daitengu.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/schrodingers-lolcat.jpg

I am currently suffering from the following malady:

Dylan Thomas's famous line "And death shall have no dominion" has been running through my head all morning. I am not happy about this, because it is doing so to the tune of "Yes! We have no bananas!"

Someone over on Doug's book review site mentioned that his instructor back in college had suggested that Penderecki's music [in particular his St. Luke Passion and Devils of Loudun] provided a good approximation to the sort of thing Leverkuhn might have written.  I tracked down a copy of the St. Luke Passion today, and it is some damn spooky music ( Read more... )

I just finished Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann, and I wish I lived in a world where everyone has read this book and moreover,  possesses the makeup that forces them to enjoy it as much as I did.   The review is posted on revdj's 27 in '07 site:

http://www.dougshaw.com/dsbb/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11752

I had an email exchange with Phil Ehrlich --- he's OUs resident philosopher of mathematics guy --- regarding my question on mathematical explanation, and he was kind enough to point me to Paolo Mancosu, a philosopher who specializes in exactly this question.  Paolo sent me some pdf files of various preprints that give a survey of the landscape, and ( Read more... )

Just something to think about for the mathematically minded out there:

Is there a meaningful distinction between "proofs that convince" (i.e. a proof in general) and "proofs that explain"?

The intuitive answer is "of course" --- we've all had the experience of reading proofs that establish facts but do not seem to shed any light, and reading proofs ( Read more... )