Dear Eduardo,
Thanks for your note. This requires a clarification.
Mathematics dissertations may not use natural language, but mathematics itself is an explicit and clearly defined symbolic language. Mathematics is much less ambiguous than words. This makes it possible to write a much shorter and more economical thesis than one can usually write using natural language. For time to time, people can earn a PhD in mathematics with a thesis of only a few pages.
Not being a mathematician, I do not know the traditions with regard to stating the problem and discussing research methods. Nevertheless, there must be clear and explicit traditions for people who work in an axiomatic, symbolic language in which everyone understands and agrees to common rules without regard to the culture from which they come.
This is quite different to a book or thesis in pictorial images. Pictorial images are ambiguous, culture-dependent, and open to entirely different interpretations that depend on the inner world of the viewer.
The hermeneutical horizon makes the world of pictorial images entirely different to the explicit and carefully defined language of mathematical symbols. While all human symbolic languages involve some form of hermeneutics, but the nature of these languages differs, as does the way we communicate, read, and interpret them.
In this sense, the numerical portions of a thesis in mathematics constitute an explicit and unambiguous written discourse, while the pictorial portions of Unflattening do not.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
--
Eduardo Corte-Real wrote:
—snip—
I went to take a look at some PhDs in Mathematics, found one on Physics and it ends to be very similar to what I expect a PhD in Maths looks like.
Most of the arguments are developed through formulas, and of course, if not demonstrated through formulas, not valid. Written discourse seems to introduce and connect formulas but the formulas are conducting the document to its final conclusions.
Of course, only peers are able to follow the reasonings and arguments expressed in such manner.
In the limit we may admit that through very eloquent formulas, we could accept a Maths dissertation almost without written discourse, especially dealing with calculus. An “Unflattening" Maths Thesis would probably be possible with little discussion.
—snip—
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|