![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Beware of mathematicians!
Sep. 5th, 2017 07:23 amThis post is written in English because it is very important.
580 words, reading time: 2.5 minutes, further mental damage for some software developers.
Many centuries the sentence "People cannot fly" was a proven scientific fact. Generations of engineers tried to create models to deny this. They built mechanical constructions created on base of this models and experimented with them.
As you know engineers finally had succeeded.
Note, science does not change the world we live in. It can explain, describe, classify, suggest, predict something in the reality but it does not try to affect it.
Scientists protect the purity of their sciences behind the walls of an ivory tower. And the mathematicians live on the very top of it. They work with clean graceful abstractions far above the mud of our earthly life.
If someone tries to apply mathematics for some real world tasks and fails, a mathematician says: "I'm right! My formulas are correct. My theorems are correct. They must work. It fails because this person does not understand obvious things and is poorly educated".
Engineers do not have a luxurious protected imaginary world. They are forced to fight head on against all disturbances and imperfections. If something goes wrong, they roll up their sleeves and start to search for their own errors and real world facts they have not considered in their models.
Only at the end of a long journey through trials and errors, optimistic expectations and bitter disappointments, careful examinations and bold assumptions, small corrections and big changes an engineer can say "We have solved all problems. It flies. I am Wright."
Engineers respect mathematicians. But this admiration is distant. If mathematicians climb down from their ivory tower and try to touch something real, they turn for engineers into a walking disaster.
( Read more... )
Previous part: Physics works with bullet prof good enough models, mathematics works with brittle absolute models
2. Scientific models are created to find the truth, engineering models are created to become true
580 words, reading time: 2.5 minutes, further mental damage for some software developers.
Many centuries the sentence "People cannot fly" was a proven scientific fact. Generations of engineers tried to create models to deny this. They built mechanical constructions created on base of this models and experimented with them.
As you know engineers finally had succeeded.
Note, science does not change the world we live in. It can explain, describe, classify, suggest, predict something in the reality but it does not try to affect it.
Scientists protect the purity of their sciences behind the walls of an ivory tower. And the mathematicians live on the very top of it. They work with clean graceful abstractions far above the mud of our earthly life.
If someone tries to apply mathematics for some real world tasks and fails, a mathematician says: "I'm right! My formulas are correct. My theorems are correct. They must work. It fails because this person does not understand obvious things and is poorly educated".
Engineers do not have a luxurious protected imaginary world. They are forced to fight head on against all disturbances and imperfections. If something goes wrong, they roll up their sleeves and start to search for their own errors and real world facts they have not considered in their models.
Only at the end of a long journey through trials and errors, optimistic expectations and bitter disappointments, careful examinations and bold assumptions, small corrections and big changes an engineer can say "We have solved all problems. It flies. I am Wright."
Engineers respect mathematicians. But this admiration is distant. If mathematicians climb down from their ivory tower and try to touch something real, they turn for engineers into a walking disaster.
( Read more... )
