[FRIAM] what is math?

[jon zingale]

Thanks, Roger. I appreciate the aphorisms that attempt to
place mathematics in the context of a larger human project:

- The largest coherent artifact that’s been built by civilization.
- The longest continuous human thought.

but then also, by contrast:

- A proto-text whose existence is only postulated.

Also along humanitarian lines, there is the view presented in
Imre Lakatos' "Proofs and Refutations"[∴]. There, the process
of doing mathematics provides grounds for a human discourse
that spans generations, the medium as well as the common
object allowing minds separated in time and space to meet.
The literature of mathematics then, as portrayed by Lakatos,
manifests as a side-effect of intimacies expressed between
humans over these strange grounds.

[∴] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations



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