The Logic Off Topic list

>Surely the FRUITS of their labours might be beautiful, but how can 
>maths be abstact.

'abstract' is one of the key components of mathematics. You are thinking 
of applications of math, but math itself is ethereal and illusive. Math 
has many levels of abstraction. The first level is the fact that an 
equation can represents something from physics, chemistry, music, 
business, cooking, or whatever,and when you delete all of the 
particulars, you are left with the pure essence or abstraction of the 
problem. Thats just high school level. Believe me, or anyone else who has 
studied advanced math - it gets very abstract! 

>sure music can be described in purely mathematical terms, 

I think you mean mostly numeric terms. Most junior, senior and grad math 
books have few numbers at all - and almost look like novels with plenty 
of strange characters. There's a lot of words and few numbers.


>but maths 
>certainly doesn't move me emotionly, whereas music certainly does.

Some people are moved by a great chess game, a witty comment, an 
excellent soccer play, a great kung fu kick, a great novel, etc.