Re: WHY ARE WE CONCERNED? I

[jim stasheff <jds@math.upenn.edu>]

I beg to differ - a little



F W Lawvere wrote:
> WHY ARE WE CONCERNED? I
>
> 	"Dumbing down" is an attack not only on school children and on
> undergraduates, but also one taking measured aim at colleagues in adjacent
> fields and at the general public. The general public is thirsty for
> genuinely informational articles to replace the science fiction gruel
> served constantly by journals like the Scientific American and the New
> York Times "Science" section.

so far so good

  Those journals have never published anything
> resembling a mathematical proof

why should they?

and hence have rarely actually explained
> any scientific subject in a usable way.

a math proof is hardly necessary to explain a scientific subject in a
usable way.

now for a mathematical subject a math proof is sometimes but not always
necessary


> 	In January of 2005 the Notices of the AMS announced that they had
> for a full ten years been strictly following a certain editorial policy.
> There had been a widespread demand for expository articles. To that
> demand, the response was a new definition of "expository": all precise
> definitions of mathematical concepts must be eliminated. Authors of
> expository articles were forced to compromise their presentation, or to
> withdraw their paper.

Not all of us

and notice you are talking about the NOTICES
not the Bulletin
Mathematicians, who were for several years
> becoming aware that these new expository articles are absolutely useless
> for developing a mathematical thought,

developing a mathematical thought,

depends what you mean by that
developing in the sense of enough to be active in the field - of course not

developing a sense of what the thought of the experts are so that one
might want to learn more or NOT
or
might see relevance to ones own disparate research - they work fine
  were shocked to learn that a
> conscious policy had forced that situation.
> 	A peculiar sort of anti-authoritarianism seems to be the only
> justification offered for degrading the role of definition, theorem, and
> proof; certainly, serious expositors have never considered that the use of
> those three pillars of geometrical enlightenment excludes explanations and
> examples. Others have urged, however, that those instruments be
> eliminated even from lectures at meetings and from professional papers.

Examples ? I certinaly have not seen such
In fact as an editor and referee and all the referees I've used
have never tolerated such elimination.  in fact, due to cross
fertilization, even some physics papers now have defintions

> 	That threat is part of the background for the concern expressed in
> the many messages to the categories list over the past weeks. Deeply
> concerned mathematicians ask me "How can we know?". Indeed, how can we
> know whether it is worthwhile to attend a certain meeting or a certain
> talk, and how can a scientific committee know whether a proposed talk is
> scientifically viable? If the "you don't want to know" culture of no
> proofs, no definitions, is accepted, we will truly have no way of knowing,
> and will be pressured to fall back on unsupported faith.
>
Me thinks thou doth protest too much

or you've run into some alternate universe I'm unfamiliar with

;-D  jim