Origyptian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Martin Stower Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > Newsflash for Doctor
> > Femano. Remember those “math” problems you
> > did at school? The ones which mentioned trains
> > and boats and planes? The trains and boats and
> > planes weren’t real.
> >
> > M.
>
> In my opinion, your attempt to blur pyramids,
> boats, trains, and planes together generically as
> "math" problems is a false equivalence.

Go on.

> - We learn about pyramids as theoretical
> geometric constructs. . . .

We do that, with all of Greek mathematics, Renaissance mathematics and modern mathematics between us and what the ancient Egyptians did. Pure mathematics would be alien to them. Finding they had anything like it would be a development. Pyramids were practical things for them.

> - We learn about trains, boats, and planes in
> physics, not geometry. . . .

Then you must have weird physics courses. In my experience, the “two trains approaching each other” kind of thing turned up in mathematics. (I didn’t specify geometry, and again, in talking about geometry, you’re talking about how we classify things and not how they did.) Also there were options, statistics or mechanics. Those of us continuing with physics took mechanics.

All of which is beside the point. The point is that the problems we see in school-level arithmetic or algebra are usually fictitious. No one insists that the things mentioned in them must be empirically real.

M.