Hippasus Gurgles: Fixed Points, Platonism, Intuitionism, and Math is not Comics
On alternating Fridays, Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art. Expect mathematics and a dash of pessimistic optimism.
In my first post, I posited that math is a sequential art. I’d like to expand on my comment, making a semi-counterpoint to this post.
Mathematics is certainly a sequential art, but math is not comics.
Math can be done completely in words, without images or even symbols outside a written language’s letters and numbers; specialized symbols and pictures are used almost universally to aid in the understanding. It should be pretty easy to see that without these specialized symbols and illustrations, written math would be nigh-unreadable, but it is possible.
While understanding is strongly desired, some hardcore Platonists would probably have you believe that your comprehension is not necessary for math’s existence. As there may be an “ideal chair” or “ideal pizza” from which all chairs and pizzas gain their physical characteristics, your suboptimal, barely-adequate chair and pizza, as just an example of these ideals, give you the idea of them without giving you full access to PIZZANESS or CHAIRNESS.
