Sunday, August 5, 2018

There Are Paradoxes


Sunday reflection:

“Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics. We are not surprised to discover inconsistencies in the experimental sciences, which periodically undergo such revolutionary changes that although only a short time ago we believed ourselves descended from the gods, we now visit the zoo with the same friendly interest with which we call on distant relatives. Similarly, the fundamental and age-old distinction between matter and energy is vanishing, while relativity physics is shattering our basic concepts of time and space. Indeed, the testament of science is so continuously in a flux that the heresy of yesterday is the gospel of today and the fundamentalism of tomorrow. Paraphrasing Hamlet -- what was once a paradox is one no longer, but may again become one. Yet, because mathematics builds on the old but does not discard it, because it is the most conservative of the sciences, because its theorems are deduced from postulates by the methods of logic, in spite of its having undergone revolutionary changes we do not suspect it of being a discipline capable of engendering paradoxes.” 

— Edward Kasner and James R. Newman ("Mathematics and the Imagination")


[ ==> This will be the LAST of the "Sunday Reflections" here, as I continue streamlining  blogging activity, however be sure to return here tomorrow morning for a NEW timely interview.]


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