6533b7d3fe1ef96bd125febc

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Is (Was) Mathematics an Art or a Science?

subject

description

If you teach in a department like mine, the answer to this timeless question may actually carry consequences that seriously affect the resources your program will have available to teach mathematics in the future. In Mainz, no one is likely to protest that mathematics has long been counted as part of the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences). If it were part of the Geisteswissenschaften (humanities), this would probably have serious budgetary implications. Of course most mathematics departments are now facing a far more immediate and pressing issue, one that can perhaps be boiled down to a different question: is mathematics closer to (a) an art form or (b) a form of computer science? If your students think the answer is certainly (b), then you can dismiss the above query as irrelevant for higher education in the twenty-first century. But since I’m mainly concerned with historical matters, let me turn to the loftier issue raised by the (parenthetical) question in the title above.