That era was something of a Grothendieck cargo cult, and did for mathematics education what Le Corbusier did for architecture. Still...
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Speaking as a perhaps-decent algebraist once upon a time who nevertheless is hopeless at both logic AND physics.
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Replying to @St_Rev @Meaningness
I was hopeless at algebra, so maybe that is my problem...
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Replying to @drossbucket @St_Rev
I remember being blown away by the proof of Galois’ theorem, as being qualitatively bigger than anything I’d encountered before.
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Replying to @Meaningness @St_Rev
Some day maybe I'll learn Galois theory in a form I can understand. It's so obviously pretty that even I can tell I'm missing out :(
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Replying to @drossbucket @St_Rev
Wish I could explain it in 140 chars, but a minimal prerequisite would be remembering how the proof works… and it’s been 35 years
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Rev is so clear-thinking that maybe can give a 140 character explanation—or summarize in a few tweets… ?
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket
Very wise mathematician once said, roughly: "In the beginning there were i and -i. But we don't know which is which. That's Galois theory."
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Unpacking: We create C from R by adjoining the roots of x^2 + 1 = 0. This has two roots. Pick one, call it i, then the other is -i ...
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...but we could have called either one i. That is, complex conjugation (sending i to -i) defines an automorphism C -> C.
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*on edge of seat, going YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH* can see where you are going with this; remembering initial excitement when I got this age 20
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