아티야의 생각

http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/200502/comm-interview.pdf

 

Atiyah: The point that I was trying to make there
was that really important progress in mathematics
is somewhat independent of technical jargon. Important
ideas can be explained to a really good
mathematician, such as Newton or Gauss or Abel,
in conceptual terms. They are in fact coordinatefree—
more than that, technology-free and in a sense
jargon-free. You don’t have to talk of ideals, modules
or whatever—you can talk in the common language
of scientists and mathematicians. The really
important progress mathematics has made within
two hundred years could easily be understood by

people such as Gauss and Newton and Abel. Only
a small refresher course in which they were told a
few terms—and then they would immediately understand.
Actually, my pet aversion is that many mathematicians
use too many technical terms when they
write and talk. They were trained in a way that, if
you do not say it 100 percent correctly, like lawyers,
you will be taken to court. Every statement has to
be fully precise and correct. When talking to other
people or scientists, I like to use words that are
common to the scientific community, not necessarily
just to mathematicians. And that is very
often possible. If you explain ideas without a vast
amount of technical jargon and formalism, I am
sure it would not take Newton, Gauss, and Abel
long—they were bright guys, actually!