Thursday, June 19, 2008

Is there a question?

Is it the job of analytic metaphysicians, to put back the pictures that the axiomatic mathematicians remove from our scientific descriptions of reality; and if not, why not?
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 21, 2008

    Perhaps I'm ignorant around the job of an axiomatic mathematician, but it's hard for me to imagine a description of the world that was only mathematical.
    This is rather a trivial point on the surface, but I think it will serve:
    A scientific description, at the bare minimum would require units to have any real value; these units wouldn't belong to a mathemiticians domain.
    It would seem rather self-defeating for mathematicians to even look at there mission as one where they are attempting to take the pictures out.
    The end result might be a mathematics that is incredibly consistent and complex but it would be so decontextualized it would be without value.
    (This is not to say they aren't embarked on this project: it's just to say that it would be foolish if they were)

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  2. Martin CookeJune 24, 2008

    Hmm... they don't see themselves as taking the pictures out; they just remove inapposite subjectivity very ineptly, I think.

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