German science
by Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem · first published 1991
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2HN commenters
2014–2017first – last mentioned
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…replacement for common or good sense. The very attitude that proof is self-sustaining is as silly as the idea of being able to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. I encourage you to read Duhem's "German Science" in which he describes exactly the silliness of "science" when it is divorced from common sense. It's not magic, my friend. A man of little good sense will lack a sound place to begin reasoning from.…
on “Does Diversity Trump Ability? An Example of the Misuse of Mathematics [pdf]” ↗…he characterizes them) are wrong. Some interesting books on the subject... "An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure" by James Franklin "German Science" by Pierre Duhem
on “What Is Mathematics and What Should It Be? [pdf]” ↗…choose to proceed from. Set theory is a great example. Take Russell's paradox, for instance, and the different responses to it (e.g., ZFC, Lesniewski's mereology). I'm reminded of Duhem's rather humorous "German Science" where he characterizes German mathematics as being disproportionately oriented toward rigorously deducing nonsense from arbitrary axioms as opposed to the French tendency to rely on intuition to arrive…
on “You Can Prove a Negative [pdf]” ↗