i originally meant to write about vacations on the other blog [0] but as do many things in my life, it turned mathematical.
so i've copied-and-pasted it below.
how often do people take vacations, in this day and age?
i can't tell and even if i could, my opinion cannot be trusted: i'm an academic and apart from one afternoon per week [1], i set my own work hours. there aren't so many hours, either, but there are enough to make it feel like something close to work and definitely not play ..
.. well, not for most days of the week, anyway.
* * * * begin: waxing mathematical * * * *
not all academics can be so casual, i suppose. we mathematicians are a strange class of academic. our field is rife with technical jargon and the terminology must be both intuitive and precise in order to serve any use. but we are not quite scientists: we have no laboratories and we have no loyalty to any workbenches. a chalkboard helps, but paper and pen will do, and if there is neither then we can always think it out carefully.
according to legend, archimedes drew figures in the sand, and eventually he died amidst his figures.
nobody seems to understand us, because simply put, mathematics is a language and there are few fluent speakers. i tell people that practitioners of theoretical mathematics are more akin to philosophers than to scientists. we may refer to 'thought experiments,' but those are more thoughts than experiments.
scientists must bow to reality. despite how abstruse and abstract the theories of the physicists, there is the motivation to explain observable processes.
instead, mathematics begets more mathematics, and mathematics has nothing to do with reality [2]. if we are helpful to science, it's because science poses problems that are mathematically interesting; otherwise mathematicians would have stopped listening to scientists, long ago.
science entertains mathematics. if we produce something of value, then let the scientists have it, make their progress, and reinvent the world in their own image. they have offered us stimuli and now we can ponder new curiosities, and now the engineers can invoke this progress and harness it to whatever end will serve or sate our society.
for example, a mathematician doesn't care whether string theory is correct or not. to an algebraic topologist, string theory is another motivation for problems in cohomology, and to a complex analyst or hyperbolic geometer, string theory is another reason to revive the notions of conformal structures and teichmuller spaces.
but i digress: we will always be misunderstood. we cannot share our work to anyone but other mathematicians. we are like a type of nerd, who will bander on and on about something that is pointless to everyone else in the world, but to us, it's SO DAMNED COOL. think of WoW gamers or foodie cooks or linux hackers; we are like them.
i know some mathematicians who love to talk about their work, but amongst non-mathematical company they clam up and are nervous, in the way that people become nervous when you tell them not to imagine their best friend naked.
"it's so damned cool, but it won't make any sense if i tell you and you will be annoyed if i do tell you, so i should shut up .. but it's so .. damned .. cool .."
as non-mathematicians, you will never know us in the same way that you might never understand an artist and his art. artists must really, really care and think their art is wonderful and important; otherwise, why would they devote so much time to it, when they could be doing something more fun? why would they exile themselves in isolation, when they could spend more time with their friends and loved ones, or at least, work a less lonely occupation?
think of them, and think of us.
if you really want to understand what we do, we'll try to explain. but be warned: we mathematicians don't mean to offend if we say, "it's complicated," because it is complicated and hard and often frustrating. if it were easy, we'd have sorted it all out and be at the beach ..
.. and probably, we'd be drawing an occasional figure in the sand .. at least, when nobody's looking.
* * * * waxing ceases * * * *
on an unrelated but funny note: i'll bristle at being referred to as an 'intellectual' but i have no problem with being called an 'academic.'
[0] yes, i have another blog: two others, actually. one you can find on my profile (see sidebar) and it's about vegetarian cooking. the other blog is .. well, the other blog.
[1] the weekly research meeting with the advisor. today we ended up talking mathematics for 3 hours or so; it would have been shorter, were i better at math.
[2] except in the platonic sense, i suppose, but i'll leave that to the philosophers.
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