[In our basic essay on Consilience in Mathematics
[which is under reconstruction, following a blogspot glitch; temporarily
redirected to this post] one topic
was the way in which a given mathematical topic or object can be approached
from quite different angles, or defined in superficially quite different ways,
so that it is finally surprising that (after a lot of work and lucubration) you
wind up at the same mathematical metropolis. And just as
with the phenomenon of parallax, or triangulation (which we learned in Boy
Scouts), the result is a more multidimensional appreciation than we began with.]
We have discussed the notions of abstraction and of
generalization as regards the overall ‘topology’ (or geography) of the mathematical landscape. Not the same as either of these
are cases where two intuitively quite distinct notions turn out to imply each
other -- to be provably logically equivalent. As, the (growing) menagerie of propositions that are
equivalent or weakly equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.
The closest notion to this that we have previously touched
on is that of “Rome by Different
Roads”, which in the simplest case means merely that the same proposition, say of number theory, can be reached (proven)
with distinct sets of tools, e.g. an heavy-machinery analytic proof versus an
‘unplugged’ proof (generally using quite different ideas) which ascetically
restricts itself to using only elementary methods. The proposition you arrive at remains unchanged, the
variety of proofs something of a
curiosity. (As, the many different
ways of proving the Pythagorean Theorem, most elegantly involving no more than
a single diagram -- a small square tiltedly inscribed within a larger.) It’s like -- tiens! this road leads
to Rome as well.
Whereas in this deeper phenomenon, the different
equivalences -- the different perspective views of the same central Thing --
actually wind up changing or rather sublating
what one’s concept of Rome is.
It’s a bit like spooky action-at-a-distance in quantum physics,
in which you can’t consider the particles to be quite independently existing,
even though they are distinct.
There seems to be looming some supernatent notion, some eka-conception,
of which each individual proposition from the pool of those interderivable, are
like the sundry avatars of Vishnu, and not Vishnu himself.
The study of computability came to be known as recursion theory, because early formalizations by Gödel and Kleene
relied on recursive definitions of functions.When these definitions were shown
equivalent to Turing's formalization involving Turing machines, it became clear
that a new concept – the computable function – had been discovered, and that
this definition was robust enough to admit numerous independent
characterizations.
-- Wiki, “Mathematical Logic”
Specifically, equivalent formulations of the intuitive
notions of computability, independently arrived-at by different thinkers,
include: Church’s lambda-calculus;
Kleene’s general recursive functions; Post’s automata; and Markov algorithms.
For the notion of “independent characterizations”, compare
the Heisenberg formalism vs. the Schroedinger formalism in quantum mechanics. That one is a cause célèbre, and with few comparable
situations in the history of physics;
whereas mathematics is chock-full of people discovering the same
mountain via different slopes.
The Wikipedia article on “Representation theory” highlights
“the diversity of approaches to representation theory. The same objects can be studied using
methods from algebraic geometry, module theory, analytic number theory,
differential geometry, operator theory, algebraic combinatoriecs and topology.”
~ ~ ~
For an application of this theme to the topic of uniform
spaces, consult this essay.
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