Article at NYT about when even mathematicians don't understand math. I agree that we've reached such a state of abstraction with math and physics that academics can only focus on very small parts of problems. But to imply that math is inherently more difficult to understand and less concrete than chemistry or biology is just plain bunk. The writer claims that science writers can write vaguely about math and be accepted. Cohomologies of sheaves need only be explained in general analogical terms for the public to accept it. Not so, the author claims, with biology.

Are you serious??? Name me one layman who will scream at the lack of detail in a repot on "genetic breakthrough." "We've found a new gene that does so and so, vaguely" is all we get. Just as there are no popular math books on the Christoffel symbols, there are no popular books disucssing the finer points of charge transfer from one quinone molecule to the next in the electron transport chain. You think the uninformed masses will balk if an article discussing how the "body gets energy" leaves out the mystical details of assembling adenosine diphosphate and a phosphate to form adenosine triphosphate???

To imply that math is inherently more difficult and less objective is to supply the existing stereotype that "math is harder and more pointless than most other sciences." How can an author explore this issue when the author is obviously under the grasp of this stereotype?