¶ MIT Sequence (2)
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Index Entry
MIT Sequence:
"There has been such a rapid evolution in the sciences that what for instance the Physics Department said it was concerned with in 1912 was not what it professed in 1922. In 1912 (before MIT moved to the Charles River in Cambridge) it was concerned with mechanics in general, optics, and so forth, and a phenomenon called electricity was newly included as an appendix. By 1922 science was overwhelmed with the newly discovered world of electron behaviors and the Physics Department said publicly that physics was primarily concerned with electronics. Physics in 1950 at the same Institute was described as being concerned almost entirely with the nucleus of the atom.
“The Department of Mathematics at MIT which embraces the fundamental communications systems of all the sciences, is also the most generalized of scientific disciplines. The last time I wrote down its annual statement of self-definition was in 1953. This definition hasn’t altered much since then. Mathematics, which is both the most comprehensive and abstract of the sciences, tends to evolve less rapidly than physics or chemistry. Mathematics generalizes all sciences and all other sciences must use it.”
¶ Citations
- Conceptuality of Fundamental Structures (Kepas),p.68, 1965
