Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!im4u!ut-sally!nather From: nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: mathematics [was Re : Language illiteracy] Message-ID: <11546@ut-sally.UUCP> Date: 9 May 88 15:40:35 GMT References: <786@trwcsed.trwrb.UUCP> <8088@ames.arpa> <765@l.cc.purdue.edu> <5400@megaron.arizona.edu> Distribution: na Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 37 Summary: thank you ... In article <5400@megaron.arizona.edu>, debray@arizona.edu (Saumya Debray) writes: > In article <1940@uoregon.uoregon.edu>, Mark VandeWettering writes: > > Mathematics suffers from exactly the same problems as > > programming languages: ideas get muddled in notation. > > In article <11526@ut-sally.UUCP>, nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes: > > It's much worse than that. The basic notation -- and therefore the thought > > processes it fosters -- describes a system of "eternal truth", usually > > shown by the equals sign ( = ). It not only says stuff on each side is > > equivalent; it implies it always has been, and always will be. Whatever > > process change is needed must be artificially imposed from outside. > > That depends on the kind of system you're working with. First order > predicate logic won't let you reason (directly) about change, but try the > various temporal, modal and dynamic logics that are around. > Thank you for making my point so clearly. The original discussion concerned the use of mathematics as a programming language, pro and con, not logics that use mathematics as a basis. The original Fortran, for example, tried to look as much like formal mathematics as possible, but had to introduce many new "non-mathematical" concepts and operations in order to be a useful programming language. I'm sure that mathematics would have been used then, had it been considered suitable. -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU