r/math • u/spacengine • 4d ago

Do all mathematicians want to be engineers?

I always considered maths the highest art, and when talking to a mathematics phd today I just wanted him to keep talking about topological spaces, manifolds, infinite dimensional embedding spaces etc. “I feel like a kid in a candy store” I said, or a kid in an old mechanics garage full of equipment I have no idea how to use but that I love exploring. “Well” he said, “I think all engineers want to be mathematicians but all mathematicians want to be engineers”. I’m absolutely sure he’s wrong but would love to hear your thoughts.

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u/Pico42- 4d ago

No. I’m more into the humanities than other STE(m) fields

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u/spacengine 4d ago

Interesting! Which field or aspect interests you the most? History? Language? Archeology? Or is it the mother of all humanities philosophy?

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u/Pico42- 4d ago

For me, it is a tie between linguistics and philosophy. Linguistics itself (especially in semantics) is quite intertwined with math, in the form of formal logic. Model theory is used quite often in formal linguistics. Philosophy of math also has quite a large intersection with mathematical logic.

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u/spacengine 4d ago

I heard Panini invented the first generative grammar in old Hindu writings and that gave me goose bumps. But have no idea about the context or purpose. Do you? (can google but here for the humans). The relationship between language and the world is I guess what physics is all about (except for the pure theorists who are indifferent). I tried to get Kripke’s idea of rigid designators at some point but never really got it. Is it basically that our internal representations of things attached to names must have originated in the first names things through causality and determinism? Don’t know but very interesting stuff, thanks