Mathematics and The Sciences: Felix E. Browder
Mathematics and The Sciences: Felix E. Browder
Mathematics and The Sciences: Felix E. Browder
Browder
1. Introduction
The principal thrust of this essay is to describe the current state of in-
teraction between mathematics and the sciences and to relate the trends
to the historical development of mathematics as an intellectual discipline
and of the sciences as they have developed since the seventeenth century.
This story is interesting in the context of the history of present-day
mathematics because it represents a shift in the preconceptions and stereo-
types of both mathematicians and scientists since World War II.
The notion that significant mathematical and scientific advances are
closely interwoven is not particularly new. The opposing notion (asso-
ciated, with whatever degree of justice, with the name of Bourbaki) was
never as fashionable, at least among working mathematicians, as in the
two decades immediately after World War II. The situation has changed
significantly during the past decade and had begun turning even earlier.
It turned not only among mathematicians, but even more significantly in
such sciences as physics. The frontier of mathematical advance was seen
again to be in forceful interaction with the basic problems and needs of
scientific advance.
This is an essay on significant trends in mathematical practice. The rela-
tions between the history and philosophy of mathematics as usually con-
ceived and mathematical practice have often been very ambiguous. In part,
this has resulted from the efforts of some historians and philosophers to
impose a framework of preconceptions upon mathematical practice that
had little to do with the latter. In part, however, it resulted from the diver-
sity of mathematical practice, to lags in its perception, and to the com-
plexity of viewpoints embedded in that practice.
Let me preface this account with two statements by great American
mathematicians of an earlier period who put the case in a sharp form.
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MATHEMATICS AND THE SCIENCES 279
The first is John von Neumann in a 1945 essay titled "The Mathema-
tician":1
Most people, mathematicians and others, will agree that mathematics
is not an empirical science, or at least that it is practiced in a manner
which differs in several decisive respects from the techniques of the em-
pirical sciences. And, yet, its development is very closely linked with
the natural sciences. One of its main branches, geometry, actually
started as a natural, empirical science. Some of the best inspirations
of modern mathematics (I believe, the best ones) clearly originated in
the natural sciences. The methods of mathematics pervade and dominate
the "theoretical" divisions of the natural sciences. In modern empirical
sciences it has become more and more a major criterion of success
whether they have become accessible to the mathematical method or
to the near-mathematical methods of physics. Indeed, throughout the
natural sciences an unbroken chain of successive pseudomorphoses, all
of them pressing toward mathematics, and almost identified with the
idea of scientific progress, has become more and more evident. Biology
becomes increasingly pervaded by chemistry and physics, chemistry by
experimental and theoretical physics, and physics by very mathematical
forms of theoretical physics.
The second is Norbert Wiener in a 1938 essay titled "The Historical
Background of Harmonic Analysis:"2
While the historical facts in any concrete situation rarely point a clear-
cut moral, it is worth while noting that the recent fertility of harmonic
analysis has followed a refertilization of the field with physical ideas.
It is a falsification of the history of mathematics to represent pure
mathematics as a self-contained science drawing inspiration from itself
alone and morally taking in its own washing. Even the most abstract
ideas of the present time have something of a physical history. It is
quite a tenable point of view to urge this even in such fields as that
of the calculus of assemblages, whose exponents, Cantor and Zermelo,
have been deeply interested in problems of statistical mechanics. Not
even the influence of this theory on the theory of integration, and in-
directly on the theory of Fourier series, is entirely foreign to physics.
The somewhat snobbish point of view of the purely abstract mathemati-
cian would draw but little support from mathematical history. On the
other hand, whenever applied mathematics has been merely a technical
employment of methods already traditional and jejune, it has been very
poor applied mathematics. The desideratum in mathematical as well
as physical work is an attitude which is not indifferent to the extremely
280 Felix E. Browder
and because of the prevalence and intensity of myths in this domain that
prevent realistic assessment of the situation.
We are all very conscious of the role of the high-speed digital com-
puter as one of the decisive facts of the present epoch and for the
foreseeable future. We all know of the tremendous impact it has had on
the structure of processes in industrial society that depend on calculation,
communication, and control. In practice, this excludes very few domains
of human existence in modern society, whether technological, economic,
social, political, or military. The sciences and mathematics have not been
immune from this impact. Indeed, the scope and nature of scientific and
mathematical instrumentation and practice in our society have already been
radically changed by the existence of high-speed digital computation and
its continual decrease in cost during recent decades. I have deliberately
used the unusual phrase mathematical instrumentation to point up the
radically new fact that such a phenomenon now exists and is an impor-
tant component of our situation.
At the same time, although we are all conscious of the importance of
the digital computer (sometimes to the point of hysteria), and indeed are
inundated with advertising hyperbole from the most diverse quarters about
all the wonders that supercomputers will accomplish, many are much less
conscious of what is ultimately an even more important fact: the com-
puter is as much a problem as it is a tool. We must understand the nature
and limitations of this most powerful of all human tools. It is important
to know what cannot be computed and the dangers of what can be
miscomputed.
These limitations can be seen most plainly in the context of mathe-
matical and scientific practice. Perhaps the most significant use of the com-
puter in this context is as an experimental tool, sometimes even displac-
ing the laboratory experiment altogether. One translates a scientific or
mathematical problem into a simpler mathematical model and then uses
the computational power of the computer to study particular cases of the
general model. This approach has turned out to be very useful, particularly
when the conditions for experiment in the usual sense or of precise calcula-
tion become impossibly difficult. The mystique of such practices has grown
to such an extent that some speak of replacing Nature, an analog com-
puter, by a newer and better model of a digitalized nature.
The drawbacks and dangers of such practices without a background
of thorough critical analysis are equally clear. We must ask about the ade-
284 Felix E. Browder
quacy of the model, about the accuracy (not to say the meaningfulness)
of the computational process, and, last but not least, about the represent-
ative character of the particular cases that one computes. Without serious
cross-checks on these factors, we are left with yet another case of the zeroth
law of the computer: garbage in, garbage out, particularly with serious
scientific and mathematical problems that cannot be solved by computa-
tion as they stand. One replaces them by manageable problems, and the
validity of the replacement is precisely the crucial question. It is the im-
portance of this question that has led to pointed comments about the ad-
jective scientific in the currently fashionable emphasis on programs for
scientific computation on supercomputers.
These critical questions do not mean that we should neglect the com-
puter as a tool in science and mathematics. They do point up a sometimes
neglected fact—namely, that the computer is a difficult tool whose use
must be studied and refined. Computers are brute force instruments; their
effective use depends vitally on human insight and ingenuity. I intend here
to emphasize the importance of the intellectual arts and insights that are
or can be connected with the digital computer and its uses. These intellec-
tual arts have a vital relation to the mathematical enterprise. They con-
stitute a specialized and different way of applying classical mathematical
ideas and techniques with radically new purposes in mind. Their vitality,
both intellectual and practical, depends in an essential way upon a con-
tinuing contract with the central body of mathematical activity.
There is an interesting and slightly ironic aspect to the relationship be-
tween computer science and the central body of mathematics. Since the
mid-nineteenth century, mathematicians and physical scientists have tended
to see a dichotomy between mathematics that is applicable to the uses of
physical modeling and calculation and another kind that is not applicable.
The rules for this division have changed in recent years, with an ever-
increasing diversity of mathematical themes and theories falling into the
first category. Even so, the stereotype tends to persist, and some areas
of active mathematical research—like algebraic number theory or math-
ematical logic—tend to be relegated to the second category. Yet it is pre-
cisely these areas, grouped together with various forms of combinatorics
under the general label of discrete mathematics, that have turned out to
be most vital in major areas of advance in computer science. The basic
theoretical framework of computer science and the development of com-
plexity of computation rest upon the foundation of mathematical logic.
MATHEMATICS AND THE SCIENCES 285
5. Applicable Mathematics
Mathematical research in its various forms is an enterprise of great vital-
ity in the present-day world (although it is invisible to some outsiders).
Despite its fundamental autonomy, the enterprise of advanced mathemat-
ical research has interacted strongly in the last two decades with various
advances in the sciences. For the purposes of the present discussion, I
present two kinds of evidence.
The first consists of taking a conventional breakdown of the principal
active branches of contemporary mathematical research and inquiring in
general terms whether these branches have interactions of the type de-
scribed with the sciences. In the table of organization for the Internation-
al Congress of Mathematicians in Berkeley, California, in the summer
of 1986, we have such a breakdown in the division of the Congress into
nineteen sections. Of these nineteen sections, we may set aside two (his-
tory of mathematics, teaching of mathematics) and ask about the appli-
cability of the seventeen mathematical areas in this classification. Five
(probability and mathematical statistics, mathematical physics, numerical
methods and computing, mathematical aspects of computer science, ap-
plications of mathematics to nonphysical sciences) relate directly to the
sciences and technology. Eight have direct relation in contemporary prac-
tice to theory and practice in the natural sciences (geometry, topology,
algebraic geometry, complex analysis, Lie groups and representations, real
and functional analysis, partial differential equations, ordinary differen-
tial equations and dynamical systems). The remaining four (mathematical
logic and foundations, algebra, number theory, discrete mathematics and
combinatorics) have an equally vital relation to computer science. There
is no residue of mathematics that is fundamentally not applicable on this
list.
The second kind of evidence is illustrated by the study of the soliton
theory of the Korteweg-De Vries equation in the periodic case. The ap-
plications of algebraic geometry and complex analysis to the study of the
Korteweg-De Vries equation under periodic boundary conditions not only
contributed to the understanding of the physical model involved but reacted
upon the disciplines involved. New ideas and methods in both math-
ematical disciplines arose from this interaction, resulting in the solution
of classical problems in algebraic geometry and function theory. In an
even more striking case, the young Oxford mathematician Simon Donald-
288 Felix E. Browder
matter of major scientific disciplines in their own right, I doubt that this
will lead to the disappearance of professional differences between special-
ists in various disciplines in attacking these scientific problems. The dif-
ference between specialties has a positive function as well as negative
consequences. Specialists can rely upon the intellectual traditions and
resources of their scientific specialty, and this applies with the greatest
force to the mathematician. We can ask for a broader and more effective
effort at communication, however, among those concerned with common
problems, and we can cultivate an active interest in and sympathy with
the thematic concerns of other specialties than our own.
Notes
1. In The Works of the Mind, ed. Heywood and Nef (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1945); reprinted in The World of Mathematics, ed. J. Newman, vol. 4 (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1956), pp. 2053-63.
2. In Semi-Centennial Addresses of the American Mathematical Society, 1938.