Talk:M. H. J. Schoenmaekers

Did this guy actually do mathematics?

I'm trying to find more stuff about this guy because as far as I can tell he didn't publish a damn thing on math. His book might qualify if it had a lot of quality mathematics in it, but as far as I know its purely aesthetic and philosophical. I'm not doubting that he had the qualifications, but if we can't verify that he was an actual working mathematician, I don't think that he qualifies as one for the wp category.

Does anyone know anything about this guy that we can put on this page? So far I've got

In 1915 and 1916, theosophist M. H. J. Schoenmaekers published “The New Image of the World” and “Principles of Plastic Mathematics.” [1]

Does anyone know where translations of his books can be found? Sometimes trendy philosophers play fast and loose with mathematics (Deleuze particularly comes to mind). I'm not accusing him of such, but maybe we had ought to be careful? —Preceding unsigned comment added by The waxwing slain (talk • contribs) 08:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You are probably right. The (dutch) biography behind the link in the article does not mention any form of mathematical background nor any mathematical publications. On the contrary it does say: "Met de officiële wiskundige wetenschap had deze 'beeldende wiskunde' niets te maken; die wetenschap was volgens Schoenmaekers een steriel bedrijf voor 'verstandsverstijfden'". Roughly translated this says that his 'mathematics' had nothing to do with the 'official mathematical science' (!), which 'according to Schoenmakers' was a 'sterile' activity for 'brainstiffs'.

So it sounds to me like he was just using the term mathematics to give himself some credibility while at the same time distancing himself from the stereotype perception of mathematics. Based on the same biography his 'mathematics' was limited to dealing with 'circles, ellipses and ovals' (while also inspiring the straight lines of Mondriaan), so his actual knowledge of mathematics was probably at best comparable with that of the first ancient Greek philosophers. Not a reason to call somebody a mathematician.

So unless anybody finds evidence to the contrary the qualification as a mathematician should probably be removed. AlexFekken (talk) 03:35, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

His book on the "Principles of Visual Mathematics" (to which I've added several book references) contains no algebraic expressions, nor a single equation. His books are more on the esoteric philosophy of mathematics rather than on the practice of mathematics. You can see for yourselves, now that there are English translations of two of his books. Egrabczewski (talk) 12:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)