After years living among the Pintupi tribe of Central Australia, I came to realise that in order to understand modern physics one has only to mind one's own business... a near-impossible feat in our post-modern drift... Billy Marshall Stoneking ----- Original Message ----- From: Mark <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 6:30 PM Subject: Re: Pound Outside the Academy > > > >As a life-long reader of both Pound and the _Post_, I have to comment on > >this one -- I would challenge anyone to look through the _Post's_ sports > >section, chess column, bridge column etc. and then continue to make this > >argument -- Why is the jargon of sports reporting considered "accessible" > >no matter how opaque it gets, while modernist verse is considered elitist? > >On any given day, the paper's sports section (and business section for that > >matter) is filled with arcane refs. comprehended only by the intiates -- > >And my freshmen find the bridge columns easily the equal of Pound at his > >most allusive -- Many on this list are familiar with my criticisms of > >Pound's politics and racism -- BUT, it's no more difficult to look up > >Pound's refs. than it is to look up a player's "rubies" for the year 1984. > > Nobody has mentioned this yet, so I'll heave it in-- > To understand modern physics in general, and quantum mechanics > in particular, requires several special "languages" -- all of them > mathematical -- and, in addition, a general background in operational > philosophy, pragmatism, non-aristitelian logics and non-cumutative > [Hamiltonian] thought. > Far more work than required for either EP or the bridge column...... > > I wonder if Mr Wagner considers physicists as elitist snobs, too? > > mark chan > > > [log in to unmask] > > > That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon > sense. One of the chief services whcih mathematics has rendered the > human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it > belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dust cannister labeled > "discarded nonsense." > Eric Temple Bell, Mathematics: Queen of the Sciences > > > Las die Lasagne weiter fliegen! > > ~ >