>omphaloskeptics
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now *there's* an interesting word. Sent me scurrying for my copy
of Aldous Huxley's 'Perennial Philosophy' wherein a similar term
(not identical I don't think) describes the Eastern Orthodox
practice of "navel gazing" (probably the Greek root of the above).
Certainly the Eastern branch of Christianity was always the more
mystical (on average) than the Roman (i.e. Western) branch, which
goes a long way towards explaining why Russian "physics" tends
towards the spacey, from a Western viewpoint (too off the deep
end, too X-Files).
I mention this because some of the physicists I work with are of
this variety (really into "psi phenomena" and all that jazz --
but with lots of heavy duty math flying around on their disk
drives to explain their theories, mixed with Cyrillic (now that
we have unicode, even programming languages needn't be based
ASCII any more [1])). I'll listen in on their cafeteria banter,
always with a shaker full of salt grains handy.
I was a philo major at Princeton, with a side interests in
computer science (at the E-Quad) and world affairs via the
Woodrow Wilson School (or "WoodyWoo" as we called it back
then (1970s)).
Just to give you some background.
Regarding "factoring" -- at this point I don't sense any
really significant divergence between our positions.
Kirby
[1] see my essay 'Symbols and Operations' for more on ASCII vs.
Unicode (something I think any 7th grader should be familiar
with). http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/intro0.html
****************************************************************************
* To post to the list: email mathedcc@archives.math.utk.edu *
* To unsubscribe, send mail to: majordomo@archives.math.utk.edu *
* In the mail message, enter ONLY the words: unsubscribe mathedcc *
* Words in the Subject: line are NOT processed! *
* Archives at http://archives.math.utk.edu/hypermail/mathedcc/ *
****************************************************************************