[FOM] John Baez on David Corfield's book

Alexander M Lemberg sandylemberg at juno.com
Sat Oct 4 18:07:01 EDT 2003


On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 17:09:15 -0400 Stephen G Simpson
<simpson at math.psu.edu> writes:

"I think we are
still waiting for someone to present an example of a piece of
non-foundational mathematics that is of philosophical interest."

I believe that there are many examples. One example is exotic R^4, a
differentiable manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to
the usual R^4. This phenomenon is unique to 4 dimensions. 

Although this is not directly related to FOM, the philosophical interest
is great because the phenomenal world is 4 dimensional.

Sandy



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