From: Steve Peterson (speterson@fast.net)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 17:28:12 BST
> I am aware of the "invented vs. discovered" debate, but feel that it is
> a platypus arising from the need to see everything as a subject or an
> object. If one forgets that, and asks what a mathematical entity is,
> then my answer is: it is the thinking of the entity (actually, the idea
> goes back at least to Coleridge). Whether it exists when no one is
> thinking it doesn't matter. When I think it or you think it, it is the
> same thinking. So it is definitely not "marks on a piece of paper".
> Those marks are guides for the mathematician to keep his or her thinking
> in order, and obviously can be changed without affecting the thought.
>
> So, there is no subject thinking a mathematical object; there is just
> the thinking, which is mathematical.
>
> - Scott
Steve: More multiple choice...
Would you call mathematics...
A. a stable pattern of inorganic value (like substance)
B. an intellectual pattern
C. still a platypus under the evolutionary hierarchy
D. "Donnie, you're out of your element."
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