Approach your problems from the right It isn't that they can't see the
solution. end and begin with the answers. Then It is that they can't see
the problem. one day, perhaps you will find the final question. G.K.
Chesterton. The Scandal of Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. 'The
Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R.van Gulik's The Chinese Maze
Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host
of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However,
the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow
only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in
fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are
suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of
sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed
drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in -
gional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with
physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water
meet one another in pack- ing and covering theory; quantum fields,
crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy
theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and
electrical engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this
there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "completely integrable
systems", "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order", which are almost
impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw
upon widely different sections of mathematics.
