🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <108@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>The relation between truth and beauty is a question for
>cognitive psychology, not epistemology.

Isn't that begging the question?
>
>Mathematical 'knowledge' isn't knowledge about the 'reality' epistemologists
>and ontologists worry about at all; it's 'knowledge' about games played with
>marks on paper (evolved with the instrumental goal of causing pleasure in
>other mathematicians :-)). The fact that mathematical 'knowledge' is useful
>in forming predictive hypotheses about 'reality' is interesting, but of
>very little interest to epistemology -- because the map is not the territory;
>we throw away a lot of information in making the exceedingly complex mapping
>from, say, falling cannonballs to F=ma.

But why is the exceedingly complex mapping so beautiful?  F=ma is not complex;
on the contrary it is very simple. awe inspiringly, beautifully, simple.
-- 
(C) Copyright 1987 Laura Creighton - you may redistribute only if your 
    recipients may.

	``One must pay dearly for immortality:  one has to die several
	times while alive.'' -- Nietzsche

Laura Creighton	
ihnp4!hoptoad!laura  utzoo!hoptoad!laura  sun!hoptoad!laura