Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261206AbUJWOfL (ORCPT ); Sat, 23 Oct 2004 10:35:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261202AbUJWOey (ORCPT ); Sat, 23 Oct 2004 10:34:54 -0400 Received: from holomorphy.com ([207.189.100.168]:39372 "EHLO holomorphy.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261205AbUJWOep (ORCPT ); Sat, 23 Oct 2004 10:34:45 -0400 Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 07:34:39 -0700 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Matt Mackall Cc: Linus Torvalds , Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: The naming wars continue... Message-ID: <20041023143439.GO17038@holomorphy.com> References: <20041022234631.GF28904@waste.org> <20041023011549.GK17038@holomorphy.com> <20041023013518.GI31237@waste.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20041023013518.GI31237@waste.org> Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040722i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1346 Lines: 26 On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 06:15:49PM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote: >> It would be nice if this were qualified with something that distinguished >> the outlandish idealizations you're actually criticizing from real math, >> which makes no presumption that its axioms or hypotheses have any >> connection to reality, observations, or predictions thereof. The abuse >> you're speaking of is poor modelling for the sake of tractability of >> symbolic calculations, which has nothing to do with proof or logic. On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 08:35:18PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote: > Actually just the opposite. It's more about Godel and Whitehead than > Feynmann in my interpretation. "The notion of a perfectly modellable world is dead" and branding a field with the sins of those who misapplied it is not difficult to understand. Worse yet, it's even arguable that even the idealizations were done in full cognizance of their limited validity. Whatever else you're reading into it is not there. I suppose in this and the instance of some religiously-oriented .sig's there is little or no recourse. -- wli - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/