> I think that each culture has certain blind spots. There are
> some concepts that, though not necessarily difficult, nevertheless
> get overlooked by a culture for many years, simply because those
> ideas are too different from the culture's usual way of seeing
> things. I think a good example of this is the idea of evolution,
> which is really not a complicated idea at all, but it came as
> a great shock to our modern culture when Darwin formulated it.
Another potential blind spot is equating mathematical theory with scientific
theory. As we've seen recently with Fermat's Last Theorem, even the toughest
propositions in Number Theory are vulnerable to proof. In contrast, even the
simplest tenets of the Theory of Evolution cannot be proven conclusively. Let's
not over-stretch the boundaries of analogy (though references to Star Trek are
always welcome).
Paul Shotsberger
-- Dr. Paul G. Shotsberger Associate Professor Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics shotsbergerp@uncwil.edu Univ. of N. Carolina at Wilmington Phone: (910) 962-3306 601 South College Road Fax: (910) 962-7107 Wilmington, North Carolina 28403 http://www.uncwil.edu/people/shotsbergerp/