Megaloprepeia

Author(s):  
Michael Harris

The explosion of finance mathematics, and its implication in the 2008 financial crisis, has had the welcome, but unintended, consequence of establishing a common border between mathematics and morality. This chapter does not aim to assign responsibility for the 2008 crash and certainly not to imply that mathematics professors are specifically to blame. Nor does this chapter aim to change anyone's mind about fundamental questions of economic policy. Its primary purpose is to explain some of the context for a debate that is actually taking place, within and around mathematics, in connection with the growth of mathematical finance. The tensions between the internal and external goods involved in the creation of mathematics are well illustrated by this debate. The secondary purpose of this chapter is to provide a very brief introduction to the mathematical modeling of reality.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Potocskáné Kőrösi ◽  
Tünde Bokorné Kitanics ◽  
Péter Bertalan

Author(s):  
Gloria Julieta Zarco

Europe in general and Spain in particular are still experiencing the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. Spanish cultural narratives have imagined other possible scenarios around a financial crisis that has not only been an economic one, but also a social one. In that context, Spanish literature was used not only as a means to elaborate coherent narratives in times of crisis but also as a space to create other possible worlds. The novels Un incendio invisible (2011), by Sara Mesa, and Por si se ve la Luz (2013), by Lara Moreno, are both set in imaginary places in which their protagonists – sometimes driven by desire and other times by necessity – survive in hostile, abandoned and primitive places. The article attempts to analyse the dominance of the construction of dystopian places and the creation of ‘another possible world’ as a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008.


Author(s):  
Michael Harris

What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond the conventional answers, this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources. Drawing on the author's personal experiences as well as the thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert Langlands, the book reveals the charisma and romance of mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and existential challenges, the book touches on a wide variety of questions, such as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner party? The book takes readers on an unapologetic guided tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India, medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivelina Pavlova ◽  
Ann Marie Hibbert ◽  
Joel R. Barber ◽  
Krishnan Dandapani

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