Ask an average undergraduate: Is matter composed of atoms? Yes. Why do you think so? I realized I have no idea why I am so sure that matter is composed of atoms. It seems a really useful explanatory model with lots of power, but nobody in any class I ever took argued for any evidence [...]
Archives for December 2010
Random Integer
I was reading an article in New directions in the philosophy of mathematics[1] on the subway, and one of the authors talked about how Kolmogorov’s axiomatization of the foundations of mathematics was obviously incorrect because it couldn’t express the “intuitively obvious” notion of selecting an integer uniformly at random. Now wait a minute — perhaps [...]
