"symbol pusher" meaning in All languages combined

See symbol pusher on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: symbol pushers [plural]
Etymology: From symbol pushing + -er. Etymology templates: {{suffix|en|symbol pushing|-er}} symbol pushing + -er Head templates: {{en-noun}} symbol pusher (plural symbol pushers)
  1. (mathematics, somewhat derogatory) Someone who engages in symbol pushing; someone solving mathematical problems by manipulating symbols (as in algebra) rather than through visual or intuitive understanding. Tags: derogatory Categories (topical): Mathematics

Inflected forms

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          "ref": "1985, Jerry R. Hobbs, Robert C. Moore, Formal Theories of the Commonsense World, Ablex Pub., →ISBN, page 444:",
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          "ref": "2003, Thomas R. Shultz, Computational Developmental Psychology, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 227:",
          "text": "[…] it is clear that the symbol pusher does not understand Chinese at all; he is only following meaningless instructions. Because computer models, particularly of the symbolic variety, are merely manipulating symbols, and hence understand nothing about what they are doing, they are poor models.",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Paul J. Nahin, Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 282:",
          "text": "While known today as a theoretician, Einstein was not just a symbol pusher; the physics of D appears in much detail in his papers on Brownian motion.",
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        {
          "ref": "2003, Thomas R. Shultz, Computational Developmental Psychology, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 227:",
          "text": "[…] it is clear that the symbol pusher does not understand Chinese at all; he is only following meaningless instructions. Because computer models, particularly of the symbolic variety, are merely manipulating symbols, and hence understand nothing about what they are doing, they are poor models.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Paul J. Nahin, Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 282:",
          "text": "While known today as a theoretician, Einstein was not just a symbol pusher; the physics of D appears in much detail in his papers on Brownian motion.",
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}

Download raw JSONL data for symbol pusher meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.