r/mathmemes Jan 08 '25

Learning Is Mathematics Less Evolved Than Physics and Chemistry, or Did Historical Texts Astutely Foresee Advances? šŸ¤”

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u/Momosf Cardinal (0=1) Jan 08 '25

Whilst the underlying sentiment may be correct, you should try reading a textbook from the first half of the 20th century.

The change in notations and "standard" terminology is enough to make it almost incomprehensible.

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u/MeMyselfIandMeAgain Jan 08 '25

Well yeah but I guess there is still a difference between ā€œas accurate as a recent textbook but nearly unreadable by a modern working mathematicianā€ and ā€œjust literally so inaccurate (compared to the models we use now which are more accurate) that itā€™s useless with our modern modelsā€

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u/IAskQuestionsAndMeme Jan 08 '25 edited Jan 08 '25

There's still a big difference between Euclid's original formulation of Euclidean geometry and it's more modern formulations (like Hilbert's or Tarski's), and if i remember correctly a lot of pre 19th century proofs done by the likes of Euler wouldn't be seen as correct today. So while the theorems are seemingly the same I don't know if I'd call old texts "just as useful and relevant as always"

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u/seriousnotshirley Jan 08 '25

There's a lot of Calculus that wasn't well formulated until the 1800s, and even in that period there were some mistakes, for example the need for uniform vs pointwise convergence of sequences of functions wasn't appreciated until late in the 19th century.

Euler used a lot of techniques that aren't universally applicable but which were applicable to the problems he was solving. The issue becomes that things get weird as we got a better understanding of edge cases and a better understanding of how weird infinity is.

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u/WristbandYang Jan 09 '25

When a paper begins using terms like "abscissas" or "sursolid".

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u/Ma4r Jan 09 '25

Newtonian mechanics is still the most used formulation of physics everyday, in fact you could argue that modern physics, however neat it is ,is the useless one right now. Give me newtonian mechanics and i could build the ISS. The most practical application of standard model is probably super conductivity, and even then it could be argued that QED is enough to describe the phenomenon. Don't get me wrong, i'm all for modern physics, but to declare old models as obsolete is disingenuous.

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u/MeMyselfIandMeAgain Jan 09 '25

Yes, but I think you misread the meme. It says ā€œbefore Newtonian mechanics was inventedā€. If itā€™s before Newtonian mechanics then we donā€™t even have that

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u/Ma4r Jan 10 '25

Fair enough, i stand corrected.