From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6636 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dusko Pavlovic Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Explanations Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:52:50 -0700 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Dusko Pavlovic NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1082) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1303690071 6264 80.91.229.12 (25 Apr 2011 00:07:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:07:51 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Mon Apr 25 02:07:47 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpx.mta.ca ([138.73.1.4]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QE9L9-0005hP-2q for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Apr 2011 02:07:47 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:36824) by smtpx.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QE9L5-0004wQ-8T; Sun, 24 Apr 2011 21:07:43 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QE9L3-000723-0c for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Sun, 24 Apr 2011 21:07:41 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6636 Archived-At: a friend told me that there was a conference where music critics and = professors discussed the visual content of music. on the other side, = there are learned essays about the deep links between music and = architecture. (hegel in particular wrote about that.) the question whether a mathematical proof explains the theorem might be = of a similar kind. while most proofs of the pythagoras theorem do = explain why it is true, wyles' proof of the great fermat theorem (just a = slightly different statement) does not seem to be explaining it to too = many people. some proofs yield an explanation, some explanations lead to a proof - = but there is a sense in which the *attitudes* leading to one and to the = other are *opposite*: while explanations tend to increase the number of = words in the world, many people prove things so that we can stop talking = about them.=20 maybe the situation resembles the discussion between zeno and = parmenides: "as parmenides argued that the movement does not exist in = the universe, zeno stood up and walked around". -- dusko= [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]