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From: weemba@brahms (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: Military funding in maths
Message-ID: <216@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sat, 8-Nov-86 06:36:00 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.216
Posted: Sat Nov  8 06:36:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Nov-86 03:48:59 EST
References: <307@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <307@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> jml@cs.strath.ac.uk (Joseph McLean) writes:

>>>Mathematics doesn't win wars
>>False
>
>How so ? I seem to recall that the French were soundly defeated in a
>little battle at Waterloo.They didn't do particularly well in
>Egypt or Russia either.The fact that they had arguably 8 of the 10
>best mathematicians of the age didn't do them any good here.

Uh, this is sci.math.  So let's understand this dispute symbolically.

///(For all wars w) (mathematics did not win w)
//False, ie, (There exists war w) (mathematics did win war w)
/Huh?  After all, (There exists war w) (mathematics did not win w)

I see why jml calls himself the mad mathematician, if he likes to mix up
his universal and existential quantifiers so freely.

The canonical example of a witness for Tom Tedrick's existential quan-
tifier is, of course, WWII.

Cases could be made for many others.  To keep as close to the spirit of
sci.math as possible, let us remember Archimedes and the defense of Syra-
cuse.  Only by stupidly taking a holiday did the Greeks finally lose.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720