[rramadass]

Right; this is my viewpoint too. All the "pure mathematicians" have a bleak future where AI can do all the puzzle solving better and faster. They existed in their own world elevating "theorem proving within a formal system" as the central aspect of "proper" mathematics and everything else as ancillary.

It always felt wrong to me that while the scientific method iterated starting with the "real world" viz. Observe, Measure, Hypothesize (includes modeling with mathematics), Test and Refine; pure mathematicians lost themselves in the formalization of hypothesizing/modeling and thus lost touch with mapping it to reality. The AI revolution is now showing them up.

[TimorousBestie]

> pure mathematicians lost themselves in the formalization of hypothesizing/modeling and thus lost touch with mapping it to reality.

You’re describing a very small fragment of total current mathematical labor. Very few people work solely on “formalization” and even e.g. model theory or type theory have real consequences.

[rramadass]

I meant "Formalization" in the larger sense of the word.

The Definition/Theorem/Proof (DTP) emphasis (to the exclusion of everything else) for axiomatization in mathematics arose in the late-19th century and solidified in the 20th century. Prior to this, while mathematicians always practiced rigour, they valued insight/intuition more for understanding.

An attempt was made to teach "Modern Math" in a "New Math" manner which though withdrawn, has left its detrimental mark on mathematics education to this day. See the "Reception" and "Legacy" sections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

Excerpts:

Physicist Richard Feynman argued, "first there must be freedom of thought; second, we do not want to teach just words; and third, subjects should not be introduced without explaining the purpose or reason, or without giving any way in which the material could be really used to discover something interesting. I don't think it is worthwhile teaching such material."

In a 1971 article, mathematician René Thom rejected the New Math as "a test of memory that poisons intelligence" because of its complete neglect of intuition.

Mathematician and historian of mathematics Morris Kline observed that it was "practically impossible" to learn new mathematical creations without first understanding the old ones, and that "abstraction is not the first stage, but the last stage, in a mathematical development."

Mathematician and author George F. Simmons wrote in the algebra section of his textbook Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell (1981) that by focusing on form rather than substance, the New Math produced students who had "heard of the commutative law, but did not know the multiplication table."

Mathematician Laurent Schwartz described the new reforms as "very poor" pedagogy. For him, "The goal of mathematics is not to prove rigorously things that everyone knows. Instead, the goal is to find rich results and then, in order to make sure they are true, to prove them."

See also;

Against mathematical proof - https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2021/05/12/against-mathemati...

Proof and Understanding in Mathematical Practice by Danielle Macbeth - https://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/712?la...

[cubefox]

Yes. Though even philosophy, which doesn't have the "real world" iteration that science does, arguably doesn't have the problems of pure mathematics.

Pure mathematicians create ever more abstractions and get lost in solving puzzles on how these abstractions logically relate to each other. But since these abstractions don't have any relevance outside of pure mathematics, it's an entirely self-referential game, like chess. Except that nobody confuses being a professional chess player with being a noble researcher.

Even in philosophy, at least analytic philosophy, that issue of getting lost in your own abstractions doesn't really exist. Because analytic philosophy doesn't analyze its own concepts, it analyzes the concepts that already exist in natural language. Like truth, knowledge, probability, causation, belief, desire, consciousness, rationality and so on. These concepts come from outside of philosophy, and they have independent relevance for non-philosophers.

In contrast, pure mathematics seems to be the part of mathematics that only has relevance to pure mathematicians. Similar to how a game like chess has only relevance to chess players, not to anything entirely unrelated to chess. But again, people who are into mastering some game or sport are fully aware that what they are trying to master is a self-contained game, or sport, not something that increases the amount of human knowledge beyond that.

[rramadass]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791433