From IAN ANDERSON
John Nicholson (Forum, 7 March) complains about scientists who are ‘besotted
with mathematics’. He has an eminent antecedent in this: in Lancelot Hogben’s
Science for the Citizen (published in 1938), he wrote: ‘It is a common belief
that mathematics is the hallmark of Science, and some people are apt to
imagine that the introduction of a little mathematics into subjects like
economics entitles them to rank as genuine science. The truth is that science
rests on the painstaking recognition of uniformities in nature.’
In his earlier and possibly even more famous companion volume Mathematics
for the Million, he added, to the 2nd edition anyway, an Epilogue on Science
or Mathematics and the Real World, in which he warns against the fallacies
that exist regarding the use of maths in science. This sentence was printed
in italics: ‘The great precision with which the rules of mathematical discourse
are stated does not imply that a description of nature is necessarily more
exact because the language used to describe it is mathematical.’
Yes, I will willingly join your movement, which could well extend its
interest to the use and misuse of technique in general.
Ian Anderson Cambridge
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