Timeline for When have we lost a body of mathematics because errors were found?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 10, 2016 at 21:07 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | and I found some wrong published constructions of abstract regular polytopes: arxiv.org/abs/1603.01710 (these are of course not as spectacular as the whole Italian school story :)) | |
| May 10, 2016 at 21:05 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | we found some apparently wrong published constructions (thought of as "classical") of Hadamard matrices: arxiv.org/abs/1601.00181 | |
| May 10, 2016 at 20:47 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | See also this part near the end: "My thinking was about results that have been undermined from below. @J.J Green's example in the comments of Italian algebraic geometry seems like the best example I have seen. The trisection and individually wrong results do not seem to grow into areas, but certainly I would find interesting any example where a flawed result had built a small industry before it was found to be wrong." | |
| May 10, 2016 at 20:47 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Dima, this is an interesting example, but I really don't think it meets the OP's aim as implied in the first paragraph: "The history of mathematics over the last 200 years has many occasions when the fundamental assumptions of an area have been shown to be flawed, or even wrong. Yet I cannot think of any examples where, as the result the mathematics itself had to be thrown out. Old results might need a new assumption or two. Certainly the rewritten assumptions often allow wonderful new results, but have we actually lost anything?" | |
| May 10, 2016 at 20:20 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | the author cannot reconstruct the results in question; nor anyone else could. It's not "mislaid". | |
| May 10, 2016 at 19:40 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I still don't think this is what the OP intended - see maxwelldemon.com/2012/05/09/have-we-ever-lost-mathematics | |
| May 10, 2016 at 19:39 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | well, results from a paper that one cannot reconstruct fall under lost, no? | |
| May 10, 2016 at 19:35 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Isn't the question about maths that had to be "thrown out" because of flaws, rather than maths which was "mislaid"? | |
| S May 10, 2016 at 15:58 | history | answered | Dima Pasechnik | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
| S May 10, 2016 at 15:58 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Dima Pasechnik |