The Mathematician (1947)

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Von_Neumann_Part_1.html

59 7 9 years ago

www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk

fxbois• 9 years ago

I dream of the biography of reference about John von Neumann

pjmorris• 9 years ago

Well worth a read, especially for those convinced of the certainty of mathematical rigor. In the words of one of his contemporaries, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."... even mathematics profits from empirical grounding.

laichzeit0• 9 years ago

Second page, last two paragraphs are probably the most interesting.

My tl;dr: Von Neumann sees mathematics as being primarily inspired by empirical problems. The further mathematical theories veer from their empirical origins, the more "baroque" or "degenerate" they become.

It would be interesting to know what inspired him to write this. Maybe something equivalent to, e.g. modern string theory, which was pissing him off.

throwaway729• 9 years ago

It would be interesting to know what inspired him to write this. Maybe something equivalent to, e.g. modern string theory, which was pissing him off.

Google found this in "Prisoner's Dilemma/John Von Neumann, Game Theory and the Puzzle of the Bomb" by William Poundstone (page 29):

"As the same time he insists that the best mathematics is usually inspired by practical problems. This can be read as a defense of game theory (among other things) to those fellow mathematicians who deprecated it as an applied field."

So perhaps more out of an irritation with condescending/dismissive pure mathematicians than an irritation with overly abstract theories per se.

Hopefully someone who knows more about Von Neumann will stumble along these posts and provide more insight.

octoploid• 9 years ago

The article was written 1947, so I guess he was thinking of algebraic geometry before Grothendieck came along.

n4r92• 9 years ago

The further mathematical theories veer from their empirical origins, the more "baroque" or "degenerate" they become ... maybe something equivalent to, e.g. modern string theory ... was pissing him off.

I really didn't get the impression that this was an attack on "very pure" mathematics. Perhaps an attack on the notion of absolute/universal rigour. The stuff about degeneracy appears almost as an interesting aside.

n4r92• 9 years ago

If you're interested in the idea of mathematics having an empirical grounding, Matthew Leifer's essay "Mathematics is Physics" is a nice development.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.02770

The Mathematician (1947)

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