MATHEMATICALVIRUSES-ArizonaStateUniversity.pdfVIP

MATHEMATICAL VIRUSES* David Hestenes ABSTRACT. The discovery of Mathematical Viruses is announced here for the first time. Such viruses are a serious threat to the general mental health of the mathematical community. Several viruses inimical to the unity of mathematics are identified, and their deleterious characteristics are described. A strong dose of geometric algebra and calculus is the best medicine for both prevention and cure. 1. INTRODUCTION Computer viruses have been prominent in the news lately. The increasingly widespread and frequent communication among computers has facilitated the spread of computer viruses to the point where viruses are seriously regarded as a threat to national security in the United States. The computer virus (CV) owes its name and perhaps its genesis to the biological virus (BV). Like a BV, a CV cannot function by itself, but when attached to a host it replicates repeatedly until it impairs the functioning of the host, sometimes to the point of disabling the host altogether. Moreover, it is infectious, spreading from one host to another on contact. The host of a CV is a computer program, to which the CV is attached as a subroutine, replicating and spreading whenever the host program is run. Similarly, a BV is a fragment of DNA containing instructions for self-replication which are activated when the BV is in a living cell. Fortunately, antiviral agents can be developed to cure infected computers as well as biological organisms. My purpose here is to call your attention to another kind of virus — one which can infect the mind — the mind of anyone doing mathematics, from young student to profes- sional mathematician. As I believe this is the first published paper to explicitly identify such viruses, I take the liberty of