Notional Slurry

[juldea]

So first en_ki posted a link to this article on why unorthodox ("crackpot") scientists fail (and it's not because of their crazy ideas). I checked out this notionalslurry guy/thing, and was immediately drawn in the by the title of the (at this time) penultimate article (title slightly altered):

You know that part in Babyon Five when they had [spoiler] the [spoiler] and the [spoiler] and you thought it was all over, but they still had to deal with [spoiler] and all, and so it still took an entire [spoiler]-full of episodes to finish things off? Like [spoiler] and [spoiler]?; or, Erdos Number Auction II

Hey, some people haven't seen it yet. I just got there, in fact..

The better thing is what that article is actually about: an ebay auction selling off an Erdös number of 2. Apparently there was this busy mathematician named Paul Erdös who collaborated with at least 509 other people on papers until his death in 1986, and now he's the Kevin Bacon of the mathematics community. If you co-authored directly with him, you get an Erdös number of 1; if you co-author with one of those, your number is 2, etc. The auction is selling off the opportunity to write a paper with someone who has a 1, so you get a 2. *grin*

I think that's awesome.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Erdös said that God had a great big Book with proofs for all the true theorems of mathematics. "That proof is straight from the Book", "you don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in the Book", etc.

More generally, I would say that mathematics has a sort of absolute non-physical reality that is more enduring than all actual physical things: no matter what the laws of the universe might be, two and two still make four and Fermat's last theorem still holds. Many interesting aspects of the physical universe, such as the inverse-square character of many forces (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=why+gravitation+is+an+inverse+square+force), turn out to be inexorable mathematical consequences of very simple things like symmetry, so it may be that only a few very simple geometric laws are sufficient to generate you and me. In fact, there need not be a distinction between physical things and math; rules that work on any subject work just as well on no subject, if you see what I mean.

What I am calling "Erdösism" for now consists of a persistent sense of awe at that idea, combined with a resulting drive to learn all about the universe and all about mathematics. Also, the answer to the question of "who created the universe?" becomes "math"; and the fact that I have an answer to that question means I damn well have a religion.