Re: OT: mathematicians (Was: Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 27)

On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 11:43:05AM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> H. S. Teoh scripsit:
>
> > Putting these together, you can think of 0 as the empty set, 1 as the set
> > that contains the empty set, 2 as the set containing the 0 and 1 (i.e.,
> > the empty set and the set that contains the empty set), ad infinitum. In
> > other words, the entire field of mathematics is made of empty sets; all
> > theorems are ultimately just pronouncements about empty sets. Now we know
> > where mathematicians dispose their cups after consuming all that
> > coffee.[2]
>
> If they happen to be topologists, of course, they deform them into doughnuts
> and dunk them in a new cup of coffee.
[snip]

And if they were geometrists, they'd build a 4-dimensional Moebius cup, so
that the cup can never be emptied. (Because even after they've drunk the
coffee, it's technically still in the cup---there is only one surface, and
the inside *is* the outside).  :-P


T

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