User talk:D.Lazard
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Safe Primes, in RSA[edit]
Ok, let's try to discuss here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:RSA_(cryptosystem)#Safe_Primes,_in_RSA_Key_Generation No "reliable sources" are needed here. Here you just need to think with your own head. This is math. In any case, I do not owe you anything, and I do not demand anything from you.
Coordinate Systems and Analytic Geometry[edit]
Moved to Talk:Cartesian coordinate systemStop Pagiarism[edit]
Idiot D.Lazard, someone else's contribution is not your wife's *** that anybody can nail it without proper reference. Stop PLAGIARISM, you fu***** idiot. 2409:4081:2B14:293D:0:0:4309:9504 (talk) 23:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
Undo of category changes[edit]
Hi, I saw that you had reverted a number of category revisions due to unexplained changes. Apologies if the intentions weren't clear. I had mistakenly assumed it would be evident looking at the categories.
The pages that I removed from the category Algebra were removed because they were specific to subtopics of Algebra and in many cases were already part of a subcategory. As such, they did not seem to belong at the top level of the Algebra category with general algebra topics. Chrisdmiddleton (talk) 20:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
- In many cases, you have replaced category:algebra with category:abstract algebra. In most of them, the article does not belong to abstract algebra ("abstact algebra" is either the study of algebraic structures for themselves or the name of college courses). As there are specific subcategories for the main algebraic structures, very few articles should belong directly to category:abstract algebra. The same is true for category:abstract algebra, and this mean, that, if you want a more accurate categorization, you must not replace category:algebra with category:abstract algebra, but with a more specific category.
- "Unexplained change" is a polite way to say that I disagree with the change. In any case, if you disagree with the reverts, per WP:BRD, you must not discuss them here, but either on the talk page of the edited article or at WT:WPM. D.Lazard (talk) 21:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Foundations of mathematics & mathematical logic[edit]
I have just been reading your recent edits to the article Foundations of mathematics. Most of it is fine, but I'm not happy about one of your statements. The section Foundations of mathematics#Foundational crisis starts out by telling us that the foundational crisis of mathematics arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and a little later it tells us (in your words) that "These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to a new area of mathematics, mathematical logic". Certainly it led to radically new approaches to mathematical logic, but mathematical logic existed before then; the works of George Boole and then Augustus De Morgan come to mind, for example. JBW (talk) 21:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
- You are right. My point was that, while general logic belongs to philosophy, mathematical logic in no more philosophy. As far as understand, Boole and de Morgan introduced the use of mathematics in classical logic, while "mathemathical logic" is about the logic of mathematics. Nevertheless, the distinction is subtle, and I am not certain that it is pertinent. So, if you agree, I'll change the sentence into "These problems were also studied by mathematicians, and this led to establish mathematical logic as a new area of mathematics". D.Lazard (talk) 10:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I see what you mean. Boole and de Morgan's work was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using mathematics in the study of logic, whereas the work relevant here was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using logic in the study of mathematics: a very different matter. The one antecedent that I know of for the concept of "mathemathical logic" in the sense relevant here is the work that Leibnitz wrote on the subject, but since it wasn't published until the twentieth century, it had no influence on the history of the subject. On the whole I suppose we may as well keep it the way you wrote it. It might be possible to find a better form of words, but it's doubtful whether it's important enough to be worth bothering. JBW (talk) 12:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Throwing in a sound bite here: "Mathematical logic" is not the logic of mathematics, but rather the mathematics of logic. I'm speaking here about the way the term "mathematical logic" is actually used in practice as opposed to etymology. Most of the research categorized as "mathematical logic" is solidly mathematics and is really not logic at all, and may not even be very closely related to logic; it gets called "logic" because it comes out of investigations that historically were connected with logic.
- If you doubt it, pick up any issue of the JSL and look at the article abstracts, and tell me what percentage of them are really about the study of making valid inferences. --Trovatore (talk) 18:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Nevertheless, I'll change the sentence as suggested above.
- By the way, the controversy between Berkeley and Newton about infinitesimals can be viewed as a first foundational crisis, which was not resolved before the 19th century with proper definitions of real numbers, limits and functions. This is still reflected in several history sections of Wikipedia that accuse Newton of a lack of rigor, when it is only a lack of proper foundations. D.Lazard (talk) 13:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, you're absolutely right. I have also seen accounts which represent Berkeley's criticisms as simply a matter of his not having enough understanding of mathematics to realise that there was in fact no problem, which is of course a total misunderstanding. JBW (talk) 18:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Perhaps an even earlier foundational crisis was the discovery of irrational quantities by the Pythagoreans. JBW (talk) 18:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I see what you mean. Boole and de Morgan's work was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using mathematics in the study of logic, whereas the work relevant here was "mathemathical logic" in the sense of using logic in the study of mathematics: a very different matter. The one antecedent that I know of for the concept of "mathemathical logic" in the sense relevant here is the work that Leibnitz wrote on the subject, but since it wasn't published until the twentieth century, it had no influence on the history of the subject. On the whole I suppose we may as well keep it the way you wrote it. It might be possible to find a better form of words, but it's doubtful whether it's important enough to be worth bothering. JBW (talk) 12:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- I've taken a look at the new text, and most of it is pretty good sentence-by-sentence, though I might copyedit to make (for example) the treatment of articles more idiomatic. I'm still a bit worried about the thrust of it, though. It's possible to read it and come away with the idea that the "foundational crisis" was resolved by just saying, OK, we have these arbitrary propositions constituting ZFC, and we're just going to decide that the propositions formally derivable from those are what mathematics is. That probably is what a lot of mathematicians think they think, if they don't want to think about it too much and just want to dispense with the question and get back to the problem they're currently working on. But it's such an absurd position that I don't think it's what they would find out they think, if they really think about it.
- To be fair, "really thinking about it" can take a long time. There was a significant amount of time when I didn't find this view quite so absurd. But it is absurd. What then would you say mathematicians were doing for the thousands of years prior to the formulation of ZFC?. --Trovatore (talk) 18:49, 1 June 2024 (UTC)