Who Were the Sea Peoples?

I will be teaching probability and statistics in the autumn. I've begun reviewing my textbook ( Introduction to Probability , Freund), and in the introduction I find this claim: "everything relating to chance was looked upon as divine intent ... Thus, it was considered impious, or even sacrilegious, to try to analyze the 'mechanics' of the supernatural through mathematics; indeed, some of the mathematicians connected with the early study of probability theory were persecuted for this very reason." The author does not cite a single source to back his claim that studying probability was considered "impious." He does not mention a single actual person who was ever persecuted by anyone for studying probability theory. I studied the history of science at the graduate level for a year at King's College in London, and our lecturer assured us that on any scientific topic that did not seem to directly impact the interpretation of scripture, the Catholic ...

Mathematics is the study of relationships where the purely prepositional character of the relationship in question is abstracted and isolated from any other qualities any actual objects in such a relationship might have. For example, an element is in a set or not in it: we are looking at pure "in-ness" itself, and ignoring the various ways one thing can be in another: the Thunder are in the NBA conference finals in a different way than Connecticut is in the Union, and both are different from how the dog is in the doghouse. But in set theory we don't concern ourselves with how the Thunder played to get in the finals, or whether Connecticut has a right to leave the Union, or if the dog enjoys his house. We abstract away from all that, and just consider "in" or "out"... "greater than" or "less than," "isotopic to" or "not isotopic to," "countable" or "not countable," and so on. As Gauss ...

It's a common theme in TV shows and movies to see people positively boasting that they are "terrible at math." This is interesting: you don't see anyone boasting that they are terrible at reading, or terrible at choosing breakfast. But mathematics displays the reality of objective, transcendental truth. And this is a serious threat to the world of doxa , of mere opinion. So it is best to portray it as something only an elite few can possibly understand.

Legend has it that the above words were written over the entrance to Plato's Academy . Whether that is true or not, the legend reflects the fact that Plato valued mathematical training for philosophers. But why? The usual suggestion is that he thought it "trained the mind." But this is a rather modern spin on education, I suspect. I think the real reason is closer to this: Plato lived at a time when sophism was rampant in Athens. The sophists generally were moral subjectivists. What mathematical training could do, in my opinion, is convince students that there are truths about the mental world that are not just matters of opinion. That having occurred, they ought to then be more open to the idea that there are moral truths that are not simply a matter of opinion as well.