[FOM] good math hunting

[Jon Awbrey]

Re: Harvey Friedman
At: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2014-August/018098.html

"I am optimistic about a grand unification of overall purpose in mathematics, but I don't think that 
this can come about without properly putting mathematics into the much wider context of general 
intellectual activity.  Mathematics is but one vitally important component of general intellectual 
activity."

Speaking of mathematics in the context of "general intellectual activity" brings to mind Raymond 
Wilder's take on "mathematics as a cultural system".

☞ http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Wilder.html

I would like to keep that in mind, if on a back burner, and focus on a more directed species of 
intellectual activity that goes under the name of "inquiry", the flower of which species we know as 
"scientific method", however much method or madcap various lights may see in it.  Whatever the case, 
that brings us to the task of placing mathematical inquiry within the sphere of inquiry in general.

Here I can do no better than recommend C.S. Peirce's theory of inquiry as one of the best tacks we 
can take for approaching this task.

Jon Awbrey
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com