Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 820.
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        Date: 2020-05-05 07:43:15+00:00
        From: Tim Smithers 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.816: on the uses of arithmetic

Dear Peter,

Thank you for correcting my Rose quotation.  I failed to
notice my version had lost the (rather important) letter 'a'
in the second sentence.

But, as you say, mathematics is neither killing art, nor is it
a killing art.  It's covid-19 doing much of the killing these
days.  Too much killing, of Mathematics and Humanities people
alike.

I can understand your anger.  I felt the same.  Your response,
however, came over as calm and collected, at least to me.
Much more so than the words I started writing.

I wonder what Jacqueline Rose would make of me saying "I want
to stand up and be counted" ...  as agreeing with you.  Is
that some kind of act of abstract desperation, I wonder?

Best regards,

Tim



> On 04 May 2020, at 09:51, Humanist  wrote:
>
>                  Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 816.
>            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                       www.dhhumanist.org
>                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>        Date: 2020-05-03 12:28:13+00:00
>        From: Peter Boot 
>        Subject: RE: [Humanist] 33.815: on the uses of arithmetic
>
> Hello Jim and Tim,
>
> Jim, you write, defending Rose,
>
>> The problem is not with mathematics itself in some general sense, but with
>> quantifying human beings and treating them as objects by doing so.
>
> I don't see at all why counting human beings should be equivalent to 'treating
> them as objects'; that would seem to imply the rejection of mathematics (and
> science) that was one of the things that I objected to. It is true that later
> she writes 'if someone counts, they matter', followed by the non-sequitur
'with
> the further implication that they can be held answerable'--apparently,
anything
> goes.
>
> Tim, I'm afraid what I wrote wasn't a 'calm response', I was angered by what I
> see as intellectual irresponsibility. But I agree with you that mathematics is
> like natural language in that both can be used naively and uncritically. And
> both can be used for good and for ill.
>
> (Part of your response is based on a misreading: Rose writes of mathematics
not
> that it is 'killing art' but that it is 'a killing art'. It is neither, of
> course.)
>
> Best,
> Peter



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