Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

Peircers,

A few reflections that I posted on Gowers's Weblog that may be pertinent here --

Re: What’s wrong with electronic journals?
At: http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/whats-wrong-with-electronic-journals/

Having spent a good part of the 1990s writing about what the New Millennium would bring to our intellectual endeavours, 
it is only fair that I should have spent the last dozen years wondering why the New Millennium is so late in arriving. 
With all due reflection I think it is time to face up to the fact that the fault, [Dear Reader], is not in our 
technology, but in ourselves.

Here is one of my last, best attempts to get at the root of the matter:

• http://org.sagepub.com/content/8/2/269.abstract
• http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm

There are indeed Big Picture questions that open up here — the future of knowledge and inquiry, the extent to which 
their progress will be catalyzed or inhibited by collaborative versus corporate-controlled information technologies, the 
stance of knowledge workers, vigilant or acquiescent, against the ongoing march of global corporate feudalism — and 
maybe this is not the place or time to pursue these questions, but in my experience discussion, like love and gold, is 
where you find it.  Being questions of this magnitude, they will of course arise again. The question is — who will 
settle them, and to whose satisfaction?

Re: Abstract thoughts about online review systems
At: http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/abstract-thoughts-about-online-review-systems/

What is inquiry? And how can we tell if a potential contribution makes an actual contribution to it?  Questions like 
these often arise, as far as mathematical inquiry goes, in trying to build heuristic problem solvers, theorem-provers, 
and other sorts of mathematical amanuenses.

Charles S. Peirce, who pursued the ways of inquiry more doggedly than any thinker I have ever read, sifted the methods 
of “fixing belief” into four main types — Tenacity, Authority, Plausibility (à priori pleasingness), and full-fledged 
Scientific Inquiry.

I posed the question — “What part do arguments from authority play in mathematical reasoning?” — on MathOverFlow some 
time ago and received a number of interesting answers.

• http://mathoverflow.net/questions/28089/what-part-do-arguments-from-authority-play-in-mathematical-reasoning

Regards,

Jon

-- 

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/
word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/