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@seanilling Yes Sean. There are problems of language here. But there‘s a bigger issue. Most of the important parts of mathematics are neither physical nor “socially constructed”. No one could dream them up. The conversation today is however made impossible by language & politics. To sum up:
@seanilling 2/ First there is a careful philosophical tradition that means something precise by “socially constructed” as well as an activist community that means something dismissive and sloppy by the same phrase. Genrerally, the math community has not been overly interested in either.
@seanilling 3/ Most research mathematicians traditionally (but not always) oversold the objective nature of the profession’s norms. This causes historians and philosophers of science agitation. I think that’s fair, but I claim they have also oversold their contributions to pure mathematics.
@seanilling 4/ The feeling most solid research mathematicians have is that they’re studying an abstract reality that is independent of the way in which we study it. They can find being called Platonists, intuitionists, mystics etc, kind of weird if labeled by outsiders. Then come activists..
@seanilling 5/ The activists can try to emphasize the part of mathematical culture, language and practice that are not fully objective in order to cast doubt on claims of universal knowable objective shared reality and primacy that scientists advance over, say, claims of “lived experience”.
@seanilling 6/ The biggest problem comes from people who go back and forth talking about say “decolonizing STEM” because “science is socially constructed” but who then retreat to “oh we just mean that philosophically” and it is this move with which many of us have lost patience. A “deepity”.
@seanilling End/ So to sum up. There is a mildly interesting issue w/ the cultural practice of math. There is a major issue with activists trying to emphasize a marginal issue to attack a functioning system of universal truth. And there is an acultural aspect to pure mathematical structures.
