Ugh. Math is a collection of concrete symbols for simplifying different problems. It's evolved over thousands of years to help us understand difficult things. We don't make it that way just to piss people off.
His argument is that analyzing a differential equation without exploring it in phase space was like analyzing a piece of sheet music without actually hearing it.
And if music education were taught in that way-- by looking at music purely as the manipulation of concrete symbols-- I imagine some of us would be writing "kill music (as it is currently taught)" blog posts as well.
EDIT: minor grammar fix
They made some students learn something using concrete examples only, and then expected them to be able to abstract. That's just dumb.
I learn the maths, and apply to various situations in my head to make sure I understand it.
If we were to follow this guy's ideas it would cause even more of a class divide between those who can understand the "magical symbols" and those who can't. Doing what he suggests would mean that the non-cognoscenti wouldn't even have access to the understanding of simple algebraic equations.
"Next, calculate the fitness of the algorithm and add it to the pool if it is better than the worst of the last generation: <math here>"
That's exactly the opposite of my impression. Most papers are full of text, and symbols are not the main feature. For instance:
http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~yury/papers/kuratowski.pdf Graph theory, the symbolism is next to nonexistent.
http://math.berkeley.edu/~aboocher/math/tietze.pdf Topology, still symbolism does not take much space.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1989708 Classical and very highly technical, yet the ratio of text to symbolism is still in favour.