on the size of the infinite, old computers and whig history writing
so its been awfully silent around here. well most of you expected me to have given up, didn't you? but alas i was only hindered, not completely disabled. the whig history writers will never mention you as you were wrong.
more on whig history in a bit, but let me start chronologically:
after the enlightening story on modern technology february came around rather quick. around 2 days and some hours later. with february came the end of term. the end of term in turn brought exams.
me being in my 5th year at university and still without a b.sc. have a need to wrap things up.
this means no more failing exams and such. long story short: i started learning as never witnessed before.
incidently most of the learning took place in a dark and silent cave, whatever this might imply.
somewhen in mid february i almost failed my physics exam and promptly started working on chemistry. three hundred and fifty pages of a huge know it all book later and armed with a lot of knowledge of atoms i went and hopefully passed the next exam. alas the results aren't out yet, maybe i'll inform you of the outcome...
those last two weeks now i spent with the things mentioned in the title. or with my final philosophy exam if thats clearer to you.
infinity is quite an interesting thing. and many people are killing their brains to fully understand it. lately i seem to be among them. because unlike most modern mathematicians i like the idea to be able to compute with infinity. have different types of infinity, one bigger and one smaller (right now would be a good moment to start revolting against those weird ideas). but let me explain none the less:
if you take all the positive natural numbers, wouldn't you agree there's infinitely many of them? and wouldn't you agree, that while the odd positive natural numbers are again infinite in number, there's only half as many? right know i'm reading some ideas of bolzano on how to solve this dilemma. but alas whig history writing makes him a failure too.
i know it's whig history again, and i still haven't explained it. but old computers come first:
well in fact they're just that. the harvard mark i by aiken and the difference engine of babbage being of special interest and how they are (or aren't) connected.
if you want to know, maybe you should start studying philosophy (and history of science)...
finally you made it: whig history writing...
if you write about the past there's always today going to get in your way. we have a valid theory for almost everything today. especially for everything that was already of interest in the past. thus we tend to judge the past theories by how close they come todays. up to the point where we say a given idea of the past is wrong as it contradicts one of today.
furthermore we might tend to glorify past people helping todays theories grow. but make villains out of the ones who 'stalled' science with their wrong ideas. and naturally we don't take into account that exactly the shortcoming of given 'wrong' theories are the ones that made people search for better ones.
this is whig history writing.
and know you know why if you doubted the continuing of my writing here, you'll be considered a villain by me.