I came across the post “What is Combinatorics?” by Igor Pak. His intention seems to be refuting what is, in his opinion, a basic fault of my notes, namely, the lack of understanding of what is combinatorics.
“While myself uninterested in engaging in conversation, I figured that there got to be some old “war-time” replies which I can show to the Owl blogger. As I see it, only the lack of knowledge can explain these nearsighted generalizations the blogger is showing. And in the age of Google Scholar, there really is no excuse for not knowing the history of the subject, and its traditional sensitivities.”
Unfortunately, he did not show me anything. I come across his post while searching other things by Google. May be he is afraid that giving me a link in a comment will engage him in conversation? I would be glad to discuss these issues with him, but if he is not inclined, how can I insist? My intention was to write a comment in his blog, but for this one needs to be registered at WordPress.com. Google is more generous, as is T. Gowers, who allows non-WordPress comments in his blog.
Indeed, I don't know much about “traditional sensitivities” of combinatorics. A Google search resulted in links to his post and to numerous papers about “noise sensitivity”.
Beyond this, he is fighting windmills. I agree with most of what he wrote. Gian-Carlo Rota is my hero also. But I devoted a lot of time and space to explaining what I mean by "combinatorial" mathematics, and even stated that I use this term only because it is used by Gowers (and all my writings on this topics have a root in his ones), and I wasn't able to find quickly a good replacement (any suggestions?). See, for example, the beginning of the post “The conceptual mathematics vs. the classical (combinatorial) one” , as also other posts and my comments in Gowers's blog. In particular, I said that there is no real division between Gowers's “second culture” and “first culture”, and therefore there is no real division between combbinatorics and non-combinatorics.
So, for this blog the working definition of combinatorics is “branches of mathematics described in two essays by T. Gowers as belonging to the second culture and opposed in spirit to the Grothendieck's mathematics”.
I don't like much boxing of all theorems or papers into various classes, be they invented by AMS, NSF, or other “authorities”. I cannot say what is my branch of mathematics. Administrators usually assign to me the field my Ph.D. thesis belongs to, but I did not worked in it since then. I believe that the usual division of mathematics into Analysis, Algebra, Combinatorics, Geometry, etc. is hopelessly outdated.
Next post: New comments to the post "What is mathematics?"
