Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

  Perhaps you can comment on something for me. I'm
skeptical of the idea of time-travel via relativity
theory. Einstein basically said that if one could move
faster than light (ignoring the problems with that for
now) then one would catch up with light-cones that had
already escaped one's reference frame. But is this
time-travel? Because the reflected light signals and
what-not are NOT the object(s) which reflected them.
It seems to me that any nonpositivist reading of the
theory concludes that this sort of "time-travel" would
be traveling to a world of ghost, where our observer
would be interacting with mere holograms. But the idea
is still quite pervassive in modern science, so maybe
I'm missing something.
                     Travis
--- Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
wrote:

> I personally find a great deal in common between
> maths and language. Its
> all the same... manipulating symbols (words,
> morphemes) according to
> certain rules... and I wouldn't be surprised if the
> language centers of
> the brain are active when someone is manipulating
> formulae etc. For most
> maths problems I think visualization isn't actually
> that useful.... you
> tell me what you visualize when solving problems in
> number theory, group
> theory, or most of pure maths or statistics. The
> only part of
> mathematics where visualization is sometimes helpful
> is applied maths,
> and even then not always. If you're working in a
> 4-dimensional space how
> exactly do you visualize what's going on? I don't
> know about you but my
> brain doesn't do pictures with more than 3
> dimensions in them, so if you
> ever want to do relativity you'll need to wean
> yourself off those images
> in your brain a little. Pictures don't constitute
> proof and often can be
> misleading.
>
> >Samuel Rivier scripsit:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I'm a physics and math and linguistics major, and
> I
> >>will testify that every engineer thinks First with
> his
> >>senses (images), Second with numbers and logic,
> and
> >>Finally with what little logic we can convey
> >>linguistically.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I'm an engineer too, and I don't have an image
> anywhere in my head.
> >For me, computer programming is a verbal
> discipline, not mathematical.
> >
> >
> >
> >>Thought is first and foremost empirical - we
> imagine
> >>the abstract--what was and what might be--through
> our
> >>senses first. The language part comes along to
> >>organize it later.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Well, some people do, absolutely.  There's no
> reason to think
> >we're all wired up the same way, and some reason to
> think otherwise.
> >
> >--
> >Values of beeta will give rise to dom!
> John Cowan
> >(5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried
> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> >to rename '.' or '..' entries; see
> cowan@ccil.org
> >http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)
> >
> >
> >
>


		
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