The Scientific Way To Do Mathematics

The Scientific Way To Do Mathematics

A Poem by Robert Ronnow

As air and leaf litter are substrate for the bird.
And what makes a human. Separation from the substrate.
Believing the substrate and the subject are separately defined.

Whatever gives the poem form---three lines---is the substrate.
Things will be said. The signer and the seer must supply the words
Which are the substrate of the mind. A beautiful week ahead.

No hundred year storms, normal summer warming.
Your bones are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones.
At Pat's 80th b'day party most of us are old and jolly.

250,000 port-o-potties. There's a way to wash one out
And a way not to. Arctic ice melt. Slushies. One can count
Past one or nine by inserting zero to keep the rows.

Implied is an order beyond the small order we impose.
Goes to greatness human and divine. The two white wines
Death brings to the garden are the love between good friends-

Abstract. Suppose there is no afterlife, to understand the end
Imagine the beginning---no brain, no mind, no name, no I. Zero
Had already been inflated and the rose was in the garden.

© 2019 Robert Ronnow


Author's Note

Robert Ronnow
"The first fallacy is often called by philosophers 'the act-object fallacy': confusing the subject matter of a mental state, such as a belief, with the mental state itself. Suppose an over eager brain scientist were to announce the new field of 'neuromathematics,' in which old-fashioned mathematics was to be replaced by studies of the brains of mathematicians. Instead of talking about numbers and geometrical forms, we are to talk only of neurons—--this being the scientific way to do mathematics." --Colin McGinn, "What Can Your Neurons Tell You?", New York Review of Books, July 11, 2013

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Added on December 24, 2014
Last Updated on December 7, 2019
Tags: Abstract, Bird, Bones, Brain, Death, Divine, End, Form, Friends, Garden, Human, Imagine, Jolly, Leaf, Love, Math, Mind, Name, Normal, Old, Order, Party, Poem, Rose, Science, Storm, Wine, Words, Zero

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Robert Ronnow
Robert Ronnow

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A Poem by Robert Ronnow