Mathematics and war: an invitation to revisit.
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Mathematics and war: an invitation to revisit.
zbMATH Open document ID: 1041.01015
DOI: 10.1007/BF02984843
author: Bernhelm Booß-Bavnbek
author: Jens Høyrup
published in: The Mathematical Intelligencer
publication date: 2003-12-16T00:00:00Z
review text: The authors discuss the relationship of mathematics and war. The reviewer remembers numerous business meetings of the American Mathematical Society in which resolutions were considered not to engage in ``war work'' (e.g. ``Star Wars''). The authors naturally concentrate on the European situation, and ``mathematical war research has resulted in certain fundamental theoretical innovations''; think of names like Turing, von Neumann, Shannon, Pontryagin (control theory). Of course there were also figures like G. H. Hardy, Laurent Schwartz, and Lewis Fry Richardson (who developed the idea mathematically that arms races cause wars). (Richardson was a Quaker.) While mathematics in and of itself is ethically neutral, the mathematician makes ethical choices in any particular situation that presents itself and these choices are not ethically neutral. For example, Jerzy Neyman was apparently a vocal advocate of the ethical neutrality of the mathematics he did, and Marian Rejewski welcomed the opportunity to decode (an early version of) the German Enigma code. Reason in the service of purely technical rationality can be ``morally disfiguring''; the authors believe that mathematics has been used for such disfigurement since the ``mathematization of warfare'' casts a veil of rationality over the actions of war (for example, ``smart bombs''). The reviewer disagrees with the author's characterization of the Oberwolfach Institute. That the military uses of mathematics were the \textit{ostensible} reason for its creation in 1944 is certainly true, but an examination of the first mathematicians to find refuge there during World War II shows that its actual use by Süss was first to rescue mathematicians.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A99
zbMATH DE Number: 1998265
zbMATH Keywords: Warfare
zbMATH Keywords: mathematicians' responsibility for uses of mathematics
reviewed by: Sanford L. Segal
MaRDI profile type: Publication
Wikidata QID: Q62514858
cites work: Q3317035
cites work: Q4212178
cites work: Q3679145
cites work: Q4324820
cites work: Lengths, widths, surfaces. A portrait of Old Babylonian algebra and its kin
cites work: Q3960810
cites work: Q4261783
cites work: Q5241515
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02984843
OpenAlex ID: W1977090621
Recommended article: Mathematics and War
Recommended article: Mathematical contributions to the scientific understanding of war
Recommended article: War, captivity and mathematics
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1998265