Re: Quote by Knuth

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

Marcin Borkowski wrote:

>> But without the symbolic notation it isn't really math, is
>> it, because the natural language, no matter how careful one
>> is, can still be misinterpreted, interpreted in several
>> ways, it can be translated, made fun of ...
>
> Interesting, but false. What Greeks did was most certainly
> mathematics even if they had little to none symbolism.

OK, well, no disrespect to them, but pioneers don't always get
it right just because their overall contribution is huge for
pushing the boundaries, for example in physics and astronomy
several thousand years ago they often referred to God in their
attempts to argue and "prove" things, and we don't consider
that part of physics or astronomy *today*.

Can you do math today without a notation, and even so, why
would you?

You can hammer without a hammer (use the back side of an axe)
but no construction working will bring an axe to his
work-place and make this argument...

> Also, there's plenty of room for misinterpretation in some
> mathematical notations (multivariate anaylsis comes to
> mind).

OK, maybe that will be formalized and agree upon some day as
well!

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