(Psst, the nlp list is <n...@projects.haskell.org> :) On 7/9/11 3:10 AM, Jack Henahan wrote: > On Jul 7, 2011, at 10:53 PM, wren ng thornton wrote: >> I can't help but be a (meta)theorist. But then, I'm of the firm opinion >> that theory must be grounded in actual practice, else it belongs more to >> the realm of theology than science. > > Oof, you're liable to wound my (pure) mathematician's pride with remarks like that, wren. :P
How's that now? Pure mathematics is perfectly grounded in the practice of mathematics :) I've no qualms with pure maths. Afterall, mathematics isn't trying to model anything (except itself). The problems I have are when the theory branch of a field loses touch with what the field is trying to do in the first place, and consequently ends up arguing over details which can be neither proven nor disproven. It is this which makes them non-scientific and not particularly helpful for practicing scientists. Linguistics is one of the fields where this has happened, but it's by no means the only one (AI, declarative databases, postmodernism,...) There's nothing wrong with not being science. I'm a big fan of the humanities, mathematics, and philosophy. It's only a problem when non-science is pretending to be science: it derails the scientists and it does a disservice to the non-science itself. Non-science is fine; pseudo-science is the problem. For the same reason, I despise math envy and all the pseudo-math that gets bandied about in social sciences wishing they were economics (or economics wishing it were statistics, or statistics wishing it were mathematics). -- Live well, ~wren _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
