E.O. Wilson - wrong
Great commentary from Edward Frenkel (professor of mathematics at UC-Berkeley) at
Slate:
Don�t Listen to E.O. Wilson
E.O. Wilson is an eminent Harvard biologist and best-selling author. I salute him for his accomplishments. But he couldn�t be more wrong in his recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (adapted from his new book Letters to a Young Scientist), in which he tells aspiring scientists that they don�t need mathematics to thrive. He starts out by saying: �Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate � I speak as an authority on this subject because I myself am an extreme case.� This would have been fine if he had followed with: �But you, young scientists, don�t have to be like me, so let�s see if I can help you overcome your fear of math.� Alas, the octogenarian authority on social insects takes the opposite tack. Turns out he actually believes not only that the fear is justified, but that most scientists don�t need math. �I got by, and so can you� is his attitude. Sadly, it�s clear from the article that the reason Wilson makes these errors is that, based on his own limited experience, he does not understand what mathematics is and how it is used in science.
If mathematics were fine art, then Wilson�s view of it would be that it�s all about painting a fence in your backyard. Why learn how to do it yourself when you can hire someone to do it for you? But fine art isn�t a painted fence, it�s the paintings of the great masters. And likewise, mathematics is not about �number-crunching,� as Wilson�s article suggests. It�s about concepts and ideas that empower us to describe reality and figure out how the world really works. Galileo famously said, �The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics.� Mathematics represents objective knowledge, which allows us to break free of dogmas and prejudices. It is through math that we learned Earth isn�t flat and that it revolves around the sun, that our universe is curved, expanding, full of dark energy, and quite possibly has more than three spatial dimensions. But since we can�t really imagine curved spaces of dimension greater than two, how can we even begin a conversation about the universe without using the language of math?
Wilson should stick to his ants and not his political science and social fear-mongering. A kindred spirit with David Suzuki (fruit flies).
Posted by DaveH at April 11, 2013 10:31 AM