As both a writer and someone who has a degree in math, I see the segregation of prose and mathematics into fundamentally different categories as arbitrary, perhaps even incorrect. I see an artistic element to mathematics, just as much as I see a mechanical element to prose. The mechanics of the thing tell us what we can do, the art of it tells us what we want to do. Perhaps even _why we do it.
I find the strict separation of human intellectual activities into "soft" humanities and "hard" sciences kind deeply sad. I'm not claiming that writing is the same thing as performing a physics experiment, but to me, humanity is at its best when it combines both of these elements instead of keeping them apart.
i fully understand and appreciate the distinctions, and equivocations, you're describing here. i also agree with you that the best "stuff" acknowledges and maximizes both left- and right-brained parameters
my point is less about these abstract concepts, and more about the perspectives that human beings have when engaging with this "stuff"
concretely -- when i'm playing a musical instrument, my brain is in a mode that is completely different than, and totally incompatible with, the mode my brain is in when i'm writing a program, or working on a math problem
it's one or the other
why's book reads to me as a "playing an instrument" perspective on a "writing a program" problem, which doesn't work for me, at all -- personally!
