From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6800 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Ronnie Brown Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: IMPACT Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:24:54 +0100 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Ronnie Brown NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1311087124 27330 80.91.229.12 (19 Jul 2011 14:52:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:52:04 +0000 (UTC) Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_Joyal?= , categories To: Timothy Porter Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Tue Jul 19 16:51:56 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpy.mta.ca ([138.73.1.128]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QjBeN-0001Lz-9q for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:51:55 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:34736) by smtpy.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1QjBcL-0003nV-5K; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:49:49 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QjBcK-0006Ok-CY for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:49:48 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6800 Archived-At: In this context, I would like to give a quotation from the the Autobiography of Thomas Young (1773-1829), referred to in the book `The last man who knew everything', Andrew Robinson, Pearson Education Inc, 2006, p.224. "It is indeed so impossible to forsee the capabilities of improvement in any science, that it is idle to form any general opinion of what would be the comparative advantage of the employment of time in any one investigation rather than another, for almost all the authors of important discoveries and even of inventions, are led as much by accident as by system to their success." Thomas Young was the person who developed the wave theory of light, and many other things. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Young_%28scientist%29 However the Government has long enjoined its research assessment panels to predict the future, without being completely clear on the methodology for this. All this does reinforce the good sense in trying to make clear the (current!) role of category theory, and its wide ranging influence. Ronnie Brown On 18/07/2011 07:51, Timothy Porter wrote: > On 17/07/2011 16:51, Andr=E9 Joyal wrote: >> Dear All, >> >> An article on >> >> THE UNPLANNED IMPACTS OF MATHEMATICS >> >> was recently published in Nature: >> >> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7355/full/475166a.html >> >> andr=E9 >> [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]