Is infinity really necessary?
Two principles on the finite/infinite relation One of the axioms of mathematics is that there exists an infinite set. Without this axiom our mathematics would be much weaker. Many of our theorems would fall like […]
Month: January 2022
The two mothers of D’Alembert
Jean le Rond D’Alembert (1717-1783) belonged to the group of scientists and philosophers, along with Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire, who paved the way for the political changes that led to the French Revolution. D’Alembert, Rousseau […]
Making compliments to Newton (by A. Huxley)
We owe Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) the novel Brave New World, a masterpiece which, despite being published some ninety years ago, portrays disturbingly well some of the meaninglessness of today’s consumerist and directed society. Shortly after […]
Alberto Calderón and finding causes from effects (and II)
More about Calderón This post is the second and last part of another one, dedicated to Alberto Calderón. We will begin with a couple of short anecdotes that affected him, directly or indirectly. The first of […]
How Hertz changed the world
We said in a previous post that when Maxwell’s equations made him think that there were waves related to electricity and magnetism, nobody had yet observed these waves. That would change some twenty-five years after […]