Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 40.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 06:14:57 +0100
From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: 14.0039 report on Colloquium at King's College London
From: Osher Doctorow osher@ix.netcom.com, Sat. May 27, 2000, 7:15AM
Dear Colleagues:
John Lavagnino's report and summary are very important. I have found that
when I translate advanced mathematical and physical concepts into an
approximation to ordinary English, I developed new inspirations, new
insights, and even new theories on both quantitative and verbal levels.
Many others have had similar experiences, and the often neglected field of
popular science books written by prominent or not so prominent scientists
(and also by non-Mainstream scientists - see for example Isaac Asimov's
works and his history of being dropped by his department for spending too
much time on non-mainstream work) is an example. I may be accused of
having Socrates on the brain, but it seems to me that this is in essence
what Socrates was doing in his own fields. The only difficulty that I
foresee is a human one: if we really boil things down to their foundations
and meanings, we may find that a lot of them are rubbish and that the
Mainstream with its Peer Reviewers is largely unsatisfactory. I might as
well offer a tentative solution: a Society for Non-Mainstream Theory and
Practice. If I may put a slightly humorous note on this, one requirement
for a submitting paper might be that it has been submitted to a Mainstream
Standard Peer Review journal and rejected, often by Contradictory Peer
Reviews to which the Editors may have added: "I am in complete agreement
with this rejection." See David Ruelle's Chance and Chaos for an amusing
description of something similar that really happens.
Yours truly, sincerely, but quite differently
Osher
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