Re:Philosophers and Other Conjurers
by pxc on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @10:50AM
(#29714818)
> What's fascinating to me about philosophy is how self-obsessed it is. When you take a math class you don't spend time learning to compute without the concept of zero or in Roman numerals.
As a former philosophy major and almost math major (ended up taking the minor), I think it would be a good thing if more people were exposed to history of math and philosophy of math, especially in STEM. This is for two reasons (1) too few STEM students are exposed to the historical situatedness of mathematics and alternative constructions to the standard ones and (2) a lot of topics in the history of math provide way more fun terrain for learning to read and write proofs than the stuff that kids in secondary or primary school are exposed to.
And to revisit this:
> When you take a math class you don't spend time learning to compute without the concept of zero or in Roman numerals.
There are classes in math departments where you work in structures that are similar to the numbers you know but where you don't use zero, and there are also sometimes cross-listed courses in math and history where you do things like compute using different numerical notation systems or in different bases.
> For example, they can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism.
? His dualism is epistemological, idk what you're even picturing here
As a former philosophy major and almost math major (ended up taking the minor), I think it would be a good thing if more people were exposed to history of math and philosophy of math, especially in STEM. This is for two reasons (1) too few STEM students are exposed to the historical situatedness of mathematics and alternative constructions to the standard ones and (2) a lot of topics in the history of math provide way more fun terrain for learning to read and write proofs than the stuff that kids in secondary or primary school are exposed to.
And to revisit this:
> When you take a math class you don't spend time learning to compute without the concept of zero or in Roman numerals.
There are classes in math departments where you work in structures that are similar to the numbers you know but where you don't use zero, and there are also sometimes cross-listed courses in math and history where you do things like compute using different numerical notation systems or in different bases.
> For example, they can't teach you about Descartes' epistemology without also getting into his ignorant dualism.
? His dualism is epistemological, idk what you're even picturing here