November

THOUGHT: The World has recently descended into a fragile state.  ‘The World’ here means the human world, the procedures, institutions, methods, customs, civilities etc. which allow seven billion of us to “get along together”, after a fashion, on this planet...


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01/05/2025

Maths for Renewing Reason – 60

The situation in advanced and higher maths in Academia is far from being satisfactory.  The Barons of Silicon Valley have been pouring scorn on the thinking and culture surrounding higher “Modern Mathematics” since 1960. They regard it as an artificial ego trip. They have been  claiming for more than 60 […]
01/04/2025

Maths for Renewing Reason – 59

We are approaching the fifth anniversary on-line of the author’s extraordinary “bare hands” proof that the sum of two natural numbers raised to the power n can never itself be an nth power of a natural number (when n>2). When it was sent to the Mathematical Gazette in 2019 no […]
02/03/2025

Maths for Renewing Reason – 58

There is a largely unaddressed existential problem which currently faces the mathematical community, arising from the question: How does computer programming differ from mathematics? This question first became a potential “Issue” around 1960, when the development of transistors resulted in computers becoming unbelievably reliable. Computers had arrived thanks to the […]
01/02/2025

Maths for Renewing Reason – 57

These blogs are offered to show the way in which conceptual, reasoning-led maths can generate interesting, sometimes important, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast digital electronics, the manipulation of chosen symbolic configurations will —of course— be mainly performed by computers. We can no longer expect to distinguish […]
03/01/2025

Maths for Renewing Reason – 56

These blogs are offered to show the way in which conceptual, reasoning-led maths can generate interesting, sometimes pivotal, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast, massive, digital electronics, the manipulation of chosen symbolic configurations will —of course— be mainly handed-over to computers. We can no longer expect to […]
03/12/2024

Maths for Renewing Reason – 55

These blogs are offered to show the way in which conceptual, reasoning-led maths can generate interesting, sometimes pivotal, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast, massive, digital electronics, the manipulation of symbolic configurations will —of course— be mainly handed-over to computers. We can no longer expect to distinguish […]
01/11/2024

Maths for Renewing Reason – 54

These blogs are offered to show the way in which conceptual, reasoning-led maths can generate striking, even sometimes major, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast, massive digital electronics, authentic, traditional maths cannot compete with the latest hardware —if the contest is simply about the dexterity of manipulative […]
01/10/2024

Maths for Renewing Reason – 53

These blogs are intended to show the way in which reasoning-led maths can generate striking, even sometimes major, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast, digital electronics, authentic, traditional maths cannot compete with the latest hardware —if the contest is simply about the efficiency of complex manipulative process.  […]
12/09/2024

Maths for Renewing Reason – 52

These blogs are intended and designed to show the way in which reasoning-led maths can generate striking, even sometimes major, results. In an age of awesomely microscopic, awesomely fast, digital electronics, authentic, traditional maths cannot compete with the latest hardware —if the contest is simply about the efficiency of manipulative […]
06/08/2024

Maths for Renewing Reason – 51

The conjecture for which Christian Goldbach (1690-1764) is famous is that <<every even number can be represented as the sum of two prime numbers>>.  Even after sixty years of exploration using incredibly powerful computers, no one has ever found an exception to this rule.  So it has plenty of prima […]
30/11/2020

Maths for Renewing Reason – 7

The theme of last month’s blog was a review of disappointments: a list of six mistakes made by the leadership of mathematics, plus reflections on their consequences, and a suggestion for remedying the demoralising effect of Ulam’s Dilemma.  These historic ill-judged decisions of the leadership resulted in maths losing big […]
02/11/2020

Maths for Renewing Reason – 6

Let’s take stock of some unfortunate glitches which have occurred in the record of Maths and which have been chewed over with some reluctance in this series.  Having surveyed the seriousness of the glitches, the next stage is to consider what can be done to put the record straight.  Maths […]