"If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen. Without you there would be no events, and there must be events. And so I serve grudgingly, for the sake of events, and I do the unreasonable on orders. People take this whole comedy for something serious, despite all their undeniable intelligence. That is their tragedy! Well, they suffer ( Read more... )

To the Editors:
Sol Garfunkel and David Mumford argue that high-school math curricula should include more real-life applications so that students will be better prepared for 21st-century careers. ("How to Fix Our Math Education," Op-Ed, August 24, 2011). They are wrong.

Mathematics, like literature, music, science, and any other subject worth ( Read more... )

This is the most beautiful place on earth ( Read more... )

I wrote an email to Alla:On Tuesday I got picked up by a guy in a truck and driven 17 miles to Forest City, PA. He dropped me off next to a dense forest and even though I could hear rain the entire night, I never felt it. The night before that I went to a bar in Ithaca with one of my best friends from middle school. We sat down at a picnic table ( Read more... )

saturday. 5:22 pm. the tea room. sarah goldberg: "what are you---oh, the Republic? you are RE-reading that, right ( Read more... )

Please tell us more about what you enjoy and do not enjoy about your job.

I enjoy showing kids the beauty of mathematics. They have been shackled---SHACKLED!---their entire lives and have seen nothing but SHADOWS of mathematics dancing on the wall. They have memorized formulas---they have not FELT mathematics. I love going in the first few days with ( Read more... )

Tempe, Arizona ( Read more... )

The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case ( Read more... )

geneva, switzerland ( Read more... )

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.

The right method of philosophy would be this: To say nothing except what can be said, i.e., the propositions of natural science, i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him ( Read more... )