All of Eric Winsor's Comments + Replies

I like this perspective! The idea of formalization as suspension of intuition reminds me of the story of the "Gruppenpest" in the development of quantum mechanics. The abstraction of groups (as well as representations and matrices) was seen by many as non-physical and unintuitive. But it turned out the resulting abstractions of gauge theories and symmetries were more fundamental objects than their predecessors.[1][2][3][4]

It also reminds me of a view I've been told many times that mathematical formalization/modeling is the process of forgetting details abo... (read more)