Ideas in science emerge most readily when some part of the world is studied for its own sake. They follow from thorough, well-organized knowledge of all that is known or can be imagined of real entities and processes within that fragment of existence. When something new is encountered, the follow-up steps usually require mathematical and statistical methods to move the analysis forward. If that step proves too technically difficult for the person who made the discovery, a mathematician or statistician can be added as a collaborator.
Saturday, April 06, 2013
I coulda been a scientist …
… Great Scientists Don't Need Math - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Julie Chovanes.)
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Then we have nothing to worry about in the US, do we? It is probably fair to say that it is possible to over-mathematize a topic---James Gleick quotes Richard Feynman on another physicist's work, roughly "there sure are a lot of equations". But Feynman was very proficient at mathematics, and there is always the example of Newton...
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