221
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 2,001:
Line 2,001: + + +
Talk:Essay:Best New Conservative Words (view source)
Revision as of 11:51, August 7, 2010
, 11:51, August 7, 2010→Decrypt: Newton was a modern and British mathematician
Brits, we're talking about '''''mathematicians''''' in this thread. Do you know what a mathematician is? That's not a physicist (Penrose), a computer geek (Lovelace, Babbage, Turing), or a political hack (Russell). One more tip: the Irish (Hamilton) do not consider themselves to be British.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 20:25, 6 August 2010 (EDT)
Brits, we're talking about '''''mathematicians''''' in this thread. Do you know what a mathematician is? That's not a physicist (Penrose), a computer geek (Lovelace, Babbage, Turing), or a political hack (Russell). One more tip: the Irish (Hamilton) do not consider themselves to be British.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 20:25, 6 August 2010 (EDT)
*''Newton was pre-modern and pre-Britain'': The [[Oxford calculators]] were pre-modern, but English. [[John Napier]] or [[Richard Recorde]] where Scottish or Welsh - though they weren't English, they were inhabitants of the British Isles, and therefore British in the same sense as most Haitians are Hispaniolians as well. Both are modern mathematicians - in the usual sense of the word ''"modern"'' when talking about periods of history. You may describe them as ''early modern''. Sir Isaac Newton - who lived even later - was e a modern mathematician, too. And as a subject of Queen Anne of Great Britain, he was most certainly British.
*''Do you know what a mathematician is? '' A mathematician is someone who contributes to the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are not squeamish: you could be covered with green fur and be a baker - if you solve an open Hilbert problem, they will you love you, and count you as a mathematician. Penrose, Lovelace, Babbage, Turing and Russell were great mathematicians, even if they were part-time physicists, geeks or hacks.