Changelings and beauticians... and (neo-Platonic) stasists... it's all here...
Physicists seem to be attentive to aesthetics.. to the material world (of course) and also to the flow of life...
What, then, of mathematicians? I am not sure why but I imagine them to be so purely abstract as to live free from temptations to connect their expert domain to other ordinary domains.
If Chekhov had a physicist and a mathematician as two characters in one of his domestically-set but culturally and psychologically revealing plays, how would he portray their personalities and dispositions?
Piers - the difference between mathematicians and physicists is a great question! Its something I've thought about aLot over many years. Its too much to contain in a comment so I'll do a Substack post as my answer. Thanks for asking and prompting.... As to what Chekov would do with these personality types.... I'll have to consider.... My main concept of Chekov is through his female characters, and there's precious few of those in the (major) histories of math + physics.... I'll have to ask your advice on that after you see my intellectual answer.
The short answer is that yes mathematicians feel no constraints about questions of "realilty". Physicists are obsessed with "The Truth" - what Is - but mathematicians are interested in "What if?" As the great pioneer of modern logic, Augustus de Morgan said in 1860 - from here on, mathematics doesn't need to concern itself with the real world, it only needs to be internally consistent. In short, physics is about the "real" whereas math is about pure imagination.
Changelings and beauticians... and (neo-Platonic) stasists... it's all here...
Physicists seem to be attentive to aesthetics.. to the material world (of course) and also to the flow of life...
What, then, of mathematicians? I am not sure why but I imagine them to be so purely abstract as to live free from temptations to connect their expert domain to other ordinary domains.
If Chekhov had a physicist and a mathematician as two characters in one of his domestically-set but culturally and psychologically revealing plays, how would he portray their personalities and dispositions?
Piers - the difference between mathematicians and physicists is a great question! Its something I've thought about aLot over many years. Its too much to contain in a comment so I'll do a Substack post as my answer. Thanks for asking and prompting.... As to what Chekov would do with these personality types.... I'll have to consider.... My main concept of Chekov is through his female characters, and there's precious few of those in the (major) histories of math + physics.... I'll have to ask your advice on that after you see my intellectual answer.
The short answer is that yes mathematicians feel no constraints about questions of "realilty". Physicists are obsessed with "The Truth" - what Is - but mathematicians are interested in "What if?" As the great pioneer of modern logic, Augustus de Morgan said in 1860 - from here on, mathematics doesn't need to concern itself with the real world, it only needs to be internally consistent. In short, physics is about the "real" whereas math is about pure imagination.