In article <41368$480700d8$82a1e228$24194@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Han de Bruijn <Han.deBruijn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Han de Bruijn wrote:
>
> > Mathematics is two things: the ART of creating ideas, and the SCIENCE
of
> > applying those ideas to real world material.
>
> Ah, forgot one thing: the DISCIPLINE to _reject_ ideas if it turns out
> that these ideas cannot appliccable. The discipline is the hardest part,
> for groups as well as for individuals.
>
> So Mathematics is three things: the ART of creating ideas, the SCIENCE
> of applying these ideas to real world material, and the DISCIPLINE to
> reject ideas for which it's is evident that they cannot be matched to
> any real world material.
However, one must be careful in mathematics not to apply that rejection
discipline too soon, as some developments in mathematics which
eventually proved to be of great use in the real world were for a long
time thought to be quite useless in that real world, and even valued
more highly for that reason.
It is typical of both pure and applied mathematicians to undervalue the
others worth.
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