I guess I'm guilty of having stated my comments in a confused manner. What I meant to say is that when nonprofessional people seek my advice about scientific reading material, I recommend number theory (Hardy and Wright style) or relativity, these tending to be immune to the mysticism that generally pervades popularizations of more advanced topics. Gene --- "The Purple Streak, Hilarie Orman" <ho@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
I'm amazed ... what kind of person would solicit your advice when seeking a mystical experience? And, if such and improbable thing occurred, why would you recommend number theory as a source for a non-genuine (or quasi?) mystical experience?
Hilarie
On Tue, 25 May 2004 at 11:43:41 -0700 (PDT) Eugene Salamin mentioned:
The target audience for the books discussed in the this article consists of people who are looking for a mystical experience, but who are astute enough to appreciate that genuine mysticism is nonsense. When someone solicits my advice on such reading material, , I suggest number theory for mathematics, or relativity for physics. Unlike quantized superduperstrings in 69 dimensions, these subjects have hope of actually being understood.
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