[FOM] 827: Tangible Incompleteness Restarted/1

Joe Shipman joeshipman at aol.com
Wed Sep 25 13:57:36 EDT 2019


No, I meant specifically “computation theory” as practiced by computer scientists in computer science departments, which involves both much mathematics of graph-theoretic and combinatorial types, and much attention to concrete measures like running time, memory space, communication bandwidth, and program size.

I meant specifically to exclude “recursion theory” involving non-enumerable sets, priority arguments, and other techniques practiced by mathematicians in math departments, because that area suffers from the same (or worse!) lack of relevance to other areas that graph theory allegedly does.

— JS

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 25, 2019, at 11:20 AM, Timothy Y. Chow <tchow at math.princeton.edu> wrote:

> Regarding Shipman's comment about computation theory---it may not get as much contempt as graph theory, but I certainly have the impression that back when it was called "recursion theory," the purer areas of the subject were accused of being specialized and disconnected from the rest of math, and were similarly regarded disdainfully.



More information about the FOM mailing list