/lit/ - Literature

>>20939220
>>realize that arithmetic is individualism and geometry is fascism and a big clash between Plato and Aristotle


Very LaRouchean observation

Post-modern critical theory-inspired sophistic bullshit is what I would term it.

>>20939226
the foundation of arithmetic is the monad numbers have no direction. they are absolute. unique without unity. without context. counting is simply a sequence of one monad after another. there is no continuity.

in contrast, the foundation of geometry is the point. the point is also a unit, but it has orientation. orientation is necessary for unity. from the point comes the line, plane, solid, etc., and the ability for a line to become a line, to be more than a mere succession of points is an emergent property result of unity. if one imagine's Zeno's paradox, this is how the arrow continues to fly.

>>20939229
because it's not sophistic to interpret Greeks with bullshit modern ideas, turning them into faggot moderns without letting them speak for themselves, right? now we can supposedly learn geometry without reading Euclid, even though Euclid would be rolling in his grave to see geometry used in the context it's used today.

>>20939229
This

>>20939229
>>20939325
Sokal is a brainlet who thinks that math and science have solid foundations when it's pretty much mostly an incoherent void that, on occasion, can save itself from being totally discredited by inventing cool things every now and then

>>20939330
An interesting thought is, how much a person might be aware of the potential for what they are making, for example consider this thought experiment.

What is the minimum amount God could have known about the possible progressions of the Universe, when designing it? Obviously there would be a desire for it to be stable, long lasting and functioning, that is a fundamental foundational need and desire.
Obviously God wanted entities to develop.

But is there a chance God could make the Universe figure out the fundamental long lasting stability stuff, and that molecules could turn into life forms, but could God have done all that and been unaware of the possibility of cars, computers, and jet planes?

Is this like a game designer, and then players and programmers who make mods the designer didn't think of?.

>>20939220
it was all pretty based until the wildberger shit. it doesn't matter whether infinity exists or makes sense to your brain, the math is rigorous and it's useful for grounding calculus so who cares. it's not "false" because all mathematical objects are arbitrary constructions anyway, as long as they follow logical rules and are consistent it's fine as long as they are useful.

>>20939387
>could God have done all that and been unaware of the possibility of cars, computers, and jet planes?
Then there is the possibility of being familiar with catagories but not specific exact aesthetics.

Maybe God had the notion of a car, and so allowed wheels and frame to exist, but God itself never designed or brought into its mind an exact Lamborghini.

>>20939387
I think you would love medieval/Renaissance Christian mystics, St. Aquinas at his most speculative, and Jewish kabbalah. I also recommend looking into Leibniz's monadology and theodicy, seeing where it goes right and where it goes wrong (Voltaire is overrated, but he had a point. I find Plantinga to offer the best explanation: it allows for free will). Finally, I recommend Molina's concept of middle knowledge.

Personally? I think God designed the best possible universe, but only from the perspective that we were to become perfect, moral beings ruling in his staid. So, the universe can't be too "full": there has to be space for humans to create. It's a good question of whether God has anticipated our creations or not: I get the impression that He does with how he warns us.

>>20939394
>because all mathematical objects are arbitrary constructions anyway
False, a line is not arbitrary, it is fundamental and eternal, it is an orderly simple eternal idea, likely any intelligence in eternity will come to consider it's base and basicness. So too, 1 line, and 2 lines. 1 star, 2 stars.

The problem comes when considering your interpretation now as valid; someone asks you to describe the universe as it is using the math you suggest; and the person says it's not working very nice, therefore the universe must be nonsensical, magic, fake, illogical, weird, wrong

>>20939411
>a line is not arbitrary
what is a line made of retard? infinite points.

>>20939394
>this goes to infinity... no I've never seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt infinity. I've never counted it. but I know it.
>actually, I made it up, but it's also somehow supposed to work in the real world too.
>I just know what infinity is, alright?!
>some infinities are larger than other infinities. this makes sense because we added a fuck you axiom
>it doesn't matter if the math calls for infinity but the computers call for floating points! it'll always work out! cut offs don't matter ever
>even if greater demands calls for greater efficiency calls for greater precision, we won't ever have a problem with these little paradoxes
>my abstractions are better than your abstractions because... because... BECAUSE THEY JUST ARE, OKAY?!?!
>JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND CALCULATE OKAY GOYIM?! TECHNOCRATIC SOCIETY IS GOOD. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO MAKE SENSE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMJr5HwJdo

>>20939428
honestly not even worth arguing with you schizos, i'm sure you've already had this conversation a million times on /sci/

>>20939408
Thanks for the recs.


Well consider humans, they can design things and then other humans can use these things in ways the designer did not think.

And we want to think so let's not take the easy way out and just declare because we have the mouth and words to that God is perfect and all knowing and knows all potential, this is a huge assumption leap of faith, bigger than required to believe in God and allows you to stop thinking.


Though I agree it's different, human to human, and God to human; God has created more and at a more ambitious scale.

So God would not only have had to envision and design every possible car and building and space ship and dog aesthetic possibility (using the combos of basic building blocks) on Earth, it just seems like too much, and it seems possible, to design a fundamental stable long lasting system, with lots of degrees of freedom and moving parts that allow 'for many different things to be done' without knowing all those different things

>>20939425
Lines cannot be made of infinite points.

>>20939439
then what the fuck is a line? did you seriously get filtered by the pythagorean theorem?

>>20939431
I humbly accept your admittance of defeat.
>I... I... I didn't know what I was doing when I learned all this bullshit math.
>I was just learning a new language, okay?!?! It's just grammar. Grammar isn't supposed to make sense. It isn't supposed to have applications. It just is, okay chud?
>I never understand ground-breaking developments in math until I go to a conference and personally receive a tutorial from people in the know. There is nothing wrong with this, and this doesn't shake my faith that anything we know in mathematics is anything more than a nerd's cant.
You have to be socially conditioned into accepting this nonsense. Even as a kid, I was thinking about how dumb calculus was. I followed the rules, I aced the test, but always thought to myself "I can't be crazy for thinking that this isn't the Holy Grail I was promised, no?"

>>20939425
>what is a line made of retard? infinite points
A line is made of whatever it's made of. Fishing line, chalk line, a stick, some rocks and minerals form straight lines.

Different things share similar characteristic. Maybe the "pure absolute idea of roundness doesn't exist", but a basketball, soccer ball, baseball, all possess that idea.

I didn't know by, 'arbitrary', you meant, 'general'.

>>20939447
A series of successive monads + unified orientation. The resulting unity makes a series of points into a line.

>>20939447
Pythagoras did not prove (although the Pythagoreans did believe) that a line is composed of points. The simplest reason is that a point by definition does not even have an infinitesimal length, and therefore cannot up to any length whatsoever. So in order to make points add up to a line, you would have to make the points miniature lines, at which point you may as well have just begun with a single line of x length.

>>20939435
Your welcome. I'm now interested in what Badiou had to think about infinity. Pic-related, I think? I don't speak French.

>>20939467
imagine a point is a location. then a line is the set of all locations in a linear arrangement. which happens to be infinite locations, or else you could construct a location that would lie in the linear arrangement which wouldn't be in the line, e.g. sqrt2 distance along the line.

the length of a line segment comes from the distance between two end points on the line, i.e.e subtracting their coordinates, not through adding up the lengths of the points.

anyway, all this means nothing for rigorous math. if there is a contradiction created by a line being made of infinite points, prove it rigorously, not with your informal dialogue.

>>20939473
Meh. We seem to be in different places in intellectual life and who is to determine for better or for worse. At some point in the past I became a writer thinker attempting general know it all, so I kind of stopped seeking out others attempts.

There is so much literature like this, and what does it really offer you. What really are you unaware of in life and the world.

It starts to become more about one enjoying the process, mystery, game, meditation, distraction of thinking, contemplating, systematizing, reinventing the reinvented wheel of systematizing and projecting, clarifying, understanding, self, other, world,.and their potentials.

Also in Op if you are it, it irks me to see it say Greeks didn't have a concept of space; it's a very weird thing to say.

Surely they had such an idea, they built buildings, they had fields, they saw each other at distance, surely they had an immediate life long relation with the idea and actual of space

>>20939220
>>realize that Descartes's unholy union of analytical geometry turns people and the world into undifferentiated mass, waiting to be divided into plots and consumed for industrial forces
What would those 1000s of years of prior slavery have done without Descarte

>>20939491
Math is attempting to be infinitely generally and infinitely specific;

Within that, where do the limits of the universe lie

>>20939220
>Descartes invents analytic geometry to explain reality, but remains a mere rationalist
>Newton takes analytic geometry, uses it to invent calculus (change, infinity) and explains physics
>"I submit no hypotheses." - Newton
>Leibniz goes nuts, rants about the superiority of infinitesimal calculus, muh causes, muh natural theology, but his autism is ignored
>Voltaire visits London, has a Masonic orgasm over Newtonian thinking, and brings it back to France to replace dusty Cartesianism
>the Satanic seeds of the Enlightenment are born with the unholy union of England and France
>>20939499
They saw the world in terms of places and powers, of which geometry was a precisely delineated abstraction. They didn't think of the world first as a 3D spatial grid and then superimposed reality onto it. In other words, they started with the concrete, and abstractions were rigorous and not allowed to float from the ground without a good reason. Here's a good article that explains it if you have the patience and read carefully:
https://progressivegeographies.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/the-place-of-geometry.pdf

>>20939220
Plato’s Academia: “Let No Man Ignorant of Geometry Enter Here”

>>20939503
yeah, what would those 100 years of trench warfare, Cambodian killing fields, Einsatzgruppen, and seed oil supremacy would have done without Descartes? You get the freedom you pay for.

>>20939513
He wanted people to have an iron-man conception of geometry so he could destroy it and initiate them into the cult of the number with the proto analytic geometry rite. the demiurge is a craftsman for the people.

>>20939473
>. I'm now interested in what Badiou had to think about infinity.
How about what you and I think about infinity?

If the universe consisted of only 10 solar systems total, that was the entirety of the universe, might our conception of infinite be different?

But maybe we would look out and see infinite empty darkness in all directions, and way, there's an idea of what infinite is; we could travel in any direction infinitly.

Infinite means non ending, no limit.
Finite means end, limit.

>>20939508
It's just hard to speak about the mental experience of millions of Greeks over 1000s of years.

Yeah maybe they didn't think about a grid, as representing space, but the idea of space is not nessecerily absolutely the idea of a grid; one can understand what the spatial is self evidently and obviously without any other notion.

Would you say squirrels have no notion of space, even though quite often whenever I see one jump from tree branch to tree branch I don't see them jump 3 yards short or far

>>20939514
Men in positions of power have often throughout history looked down on those below them in the power rankings. Even those on the bottom may look down on those slightly lower. Part of what may be refered to as human nature when that term is tossed around. Some natures of man are good, others arguably not. Some men can resist being currupted with or without power, some do not.

>>20939520
I think infinity is an unknown abstraction that human beings aren't equipped to grasp. People can't even think of seemingly small quantities without "cheating." And yet our world naturally runs on it, and our modern world is dependent on it.

How hard is infinity to grasp? Well, let's start with how hard numbers are to grasp. Take, for example, 153. Do you know 153? Then you should be able to do anything you want with 153 in your head, as you are acquainted with it. But 153th-ness is an abstraction. Nobody thinks of 153 while grasping each and every quanta, their relationship to all quanta in the sum, and then the whole sum itself. If you were to imagine it as a pure line, it would be incomprehensible. If you cheated by adding dimension to the representation, you would be breaking it into parts, breaking its unity. If you cheated even further by thinking of the mere symbol, then you would be trusting a particular language with numbers, not the numbers themselves.

To drive the point home, even if we had incredible working memories and number sense, we have to think about the limits of our finite existence. Even if we spent every one of the ~2.5 billion seconds of our lives counting up by one increment, we wouldn't be anywhere close to infinity. We wouldn't have moved even from the starting place. It doesn't matter how many efficiency boosters you give yourself. Even if you counted every atom in the universe at every moment of existence, it is still not infinity. Even if you were to count every dimension imaginable, like that "10 dimensions" meme Youtube video, it still wouldnt' be infinity. It's like we never even began, never even moved, like an Eleatic paradox.

Yet, our life is defined by infinities that we know of as continuity. The arrow continues to fly. How do we make sense of that? I have no idea. Well, maybe I have *some* idea. Nothing is just as much of a paradox as infinity.

>>20939533
You're getting caught up in the analogy and not the idea. Space is an abstraction from place. Places naturally have boundaries. Read the article and then we'll talk.

>>20939491
>imagine a point is a location.
A point is a dimensionless coordinate or position. If it possesses any dimensionality, then it is no longer a point, but a vector or matrix.
>then a line is the set of all locations in a linear arrangement.
This is no longer equivalent to a line being composed of points, it is an entirely separate paradigm utilizing set theory. The line is now defined as a set (which is defined as being an infinite summation between point x and point y), still not as a summation of points in itself. The "infinite summation" in the definition of the set is really just there for show; it means practically nothing (considering it is an infinite summation between x and y) and can't mean anything in reality.

>>20939543
>How do we make sense of that? I have no idea. Well, maybe I have *some* idea. Nothing is just as much of a paradox as infinity.
Well though it is unfortunately an oft said cliche meme, it is unfortunate because it's also most profound; why something exists instead of only nothing.
Though nothing also likely does exist (you are smart enough to know that despite a 13 year old who just watched s philosophy YouTube videos protests; nothing can exist.

Exist, usually is reserved for somethings, I know. But nothing is the exception.


How do we make sense of infinity, it's just the idea of more. I'm familiar with more, and less, and more and more.

What else are you thinking about lately, what are you curious about life and the world? Any interesting topics we can discuss or debate?

>>20939550
Interesting how you can define something abstractly with words, pen and paper, and it can not exist in reality. Like unicorns, pokemon, dimensionless points.

Then you can do things with these.

So yes, point and line is abstractly defined with pen and paper.

But it Is abstracted from what is seen of material nature: *picks up a stick* imagine if this was Perfectly Absolutely Straight.
*picks up a stone*
imagine if this was smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
Until it has no physical qualities.

>>20939637
>What else are you thinking about lately, what are you curious about life and the world?
God's middle knowledge, free will, infinity, and the philosopher's stone. I've been absolutely fixated on that.

>>20939688
Maybe stop reading goy slop and eventually you will easily conclude the answer to those topics

>>20939701
I don't read goy slop. I don't eat it either.

>>20939220
Heidegger induced schizophrenia. a common side effect of being too bookish while also being a faggot.

>>20939731
What's the cure? I don't want to be run over by tractor.

>>20939712
Then why are you fixated on entry level questions???
Underage people shouldn't be here yknow, for this is a den of rejects. You still have time to turn things around. Leave this place and return to the light

>>20939751
That's how I can tell you're a dilettante. These aren't entry-level questions. I'm quite literally 1000 feet from the top of Mount Everest, having been run haggard by the corpus of the Western philosophical tradition on top of trying to parse the Eastern traditions as well. There might be a funny Zen-like pun about how the entry-level questions are also the endgame-level questions, but philosophy ultimately boils down to questions about why is there something instead of nothing, what can we know, can life make sense, and what is the good life. Everything else is just one particular sketch to be considered or an (incomplete) attempt at solving the riddle.

>>20939779
>God's middle knowledge
Read Boethius and Anselm
>Free will and Infinity
Read John Locke
>Philosophers stone
Stop caring about goy slop

I have ascended the peak years ago if you're 1000 feet from it
Please leave this website for your own sake. It's not a place for communicating ideas

>>20939520
What about the Greek concept of infinity?
>APEIRON
>A-, not
>PEIRON, ...
>can be an end or a boundary
>can also mean trial, experiment, attempt
>can also even be a crossing, a cutting, a piercing
How did Alexander the Great handle the apeiron of the Gordion knot? He saw it for himself, and then courageously loosened it via ana-lysis.

What about the Chinese concept of infinity?
>the Dao De Jing has a cosmology
>1 begat 2, 2 begat 3, and from 3 begat the 10,000 things
>infinity is like, a really big number, like 10,000
Sounds quaint, given that China has been a population behemoth since long before the days of Laozi. Yet if you actually try to conceive of 10,000 without some kind of dimensional or symbolic cheat, you will likely be at a loss. Have you EXPERIENCED 10,000 in its full glory, knowing it inside and out?

Finally, what about the Latins and their limits?
>līmes (“a cross-path or balk between fields, hence a boundary, boundary line or wall, any path or road, border, limit”).
>from līmus, ("sidelong, askew, askance, sideways")
I find it funny how we think of limits as hard-set boundaries, perhaps with the squareness of a planned Roman city. Yet even the word has an "oblique" origin, one that was closely tied to the twisting contours of our natural landscapes.

>>20939815
Already read John Locke. I think he was way over his head because his works were like an unstable socio-political solvent for Great Britain, probably in ways he couldn't have foreseen like the freethinker movement. I liked Boethius and I think about him often over man's obsession for rational control. I feel like I've had enough of the Scholastics.

What are you trying to prove? How much you've read? I don't think you've completed any explorations in those subjects. You probably got bored and gave up, or you're just a tourist. Besides, who are you to talk about this website? I've learned tons of insightful things here from genuine anons. Yet you haven't tried to discuss anything of substance. If this website has a problem, you're part of it.

Besides, why do you hate the philosopher's stone so much? If you're read enough philosophy and theology, then you know that the occult is the logical next step. That's the veil behind the curtain.

>>20939330
>math and physics has no solid foundation

>goes on to post esoteric schizo charts with zero foundation

>>20939839
> I don't think you've completed any explorations in those subjects. You probably got bored and gave up, or you're just a tourist
Or maybe I actually understood the authors intended ideas behind their words and concluded the same. Philosophy has an logical endgame and an ethical endgame. What is left is just aesthics to pursue. This board is good for recommendations in that regard but I have yet to see anyone with genuine insight

>>20939456
>Even as a kid, I was thinking about how dumb calculus was. I followed the rules, I aced the test, but always thought to myself

This is what American education system does to you

>>20939220
>realize that arithmetic is individualism and geometry is fascism and a big clash between Plato and Aristotle
Fascism didn't exist until the 20th century. You mean nationalism?

>>20939879
>What is left is just aesthics to pursue.
What's the aesthetic endgame? What is the philosophy of imagination, creation, reproduction, etc.? Have you delved into that much?

>>20939878
das rite nigguh

>>20939688
>God's middle knowledge, free will, infinity, and the philosopher's stone.
Don't know much about God's middle knowledge but maybe it's related to what I was trying to express and ponder about what God knew about the total potentials of the universe (what could occur on planets) before God pressed Start.

Free will, from what I've gathered; it is possible for some humans more than others, sometimes more than others, to be the self determiners of a choice. Inside the head multiple choices are understood, and the awareness, the individual, themself, chooses a choice for a reason or none

Infinity: the concept of more and more and more. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; energy will go on and on and on, and exist for more and more and more;
There's no reason to assume beyond the universe is a big dome that says: Nothing beyond this point.. not even extension.

So maybe we can assume empty space goes in all directions infinitly;
Maybe due to infinite time; the much more than 999999999999999999999 molecules can keep connecting in different ways and the pattern of objects they form is not a neat and tidy limited pattern.

Philosophers Stone - don't know much about it; alchemical physical interpretations, and esoteric spiritual intellectual metaphors

>>20939909
Stop putting so much weight behind words. Read some Xunzi or Zhuangzi to get rid of your Western paradigmatic approach

>>20939836
>EXPERIENCED 10,000 in its full glory, knowing it inside and out?
Swimming in the ocean, laying in the sand, looking at the non light polluted stars, having a cellular body, experiencing years of life, writing letters

>>20939909
>What's the aesthetic endgame?
The pleasures of the middle game

>>20939738
its too late anon. the mind parasite has already made a home in your head. the best you cam do is keep your insanity to yourself and pray you dont get sectioned.

>>20939738
I would suggest getting a note claiming that any psychiatric institution that admits you against your will is doing so because you are abnormally gay to someone you trust to publish it in the event that you are committed. the facts of the case should force any institution to release you to avoid a "homosexuality is le insanity" scandal. good luck anon and for what it is worth, Im sorry this happened to you.

>>20939976
I've already read them anon. I don't think language is the house of Being.

>>20939975
>So maybe we can assume empty space goes in all directions infinitly;

If you believe modern cosmology space is finite and unbounded.

>Maybe due to infinite time; the much more than 999999999999999999999 molecules can keep connecting in different ways and the pattern of objects they form is not a neat and tidy limited pattern.

Everything is expanding away. Plus second law.

>>20939989
Simulacra of 10,000.

>>20940129
hyperbolic space time geometry

>>20939220

>>20939473
Jacob's Ladder, but French pomo edition, kek. Found a nice comparison between Badiou and Deleuze on infinity:
>In his « Immanence of Truths » project Badiou distinguishes
>...
>(1) inaccessible infinites
>(2) infinites by resistance to division or partition
>(3) infinites by immanent power
>(4) infinites by increasing proximity to the absolute.
...
>In Deleuze we can find
...
>(1) the outside further than any exteriority – the « inaccessible » outside
>(2) resistance to stratification and segmentation -resistance is prior to power
>(3) immanent distribution of affirmative powers (becomings, affects, singularities, intensities
>(4) deterritorialisation approaching the « absolute horizon » of the non-totalisable plane of consistency
>...
>On the one hand one could argue that Deleuze’s concepts of infinity are too qualitative, too vague and imprecise, remaining too intuitive and insufficiently theorised.
>On the other hand one could invert the arrow of comparison and argue that Badiou’s concepts, based on the mathematical hierarchy of infinite cardinals are insufficiently philosophical, and that they represent a slowing down of the plane of consistency.
site: https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/deleuze-badiou-infinity-an-ambivalent-comparison/

I wonder if one can "weave" these concepts of infinities, taking into consideration what infinity has traditionally meant and what others have brought up about infinity in this thread.

>>20940127
Well stop just reading and start understanding what you read. And stop consuming goy slop!

Read Kline's Loss of Certainty now too OP

>>20940212
I do understand them. You're just regurgitating texts at me and saying stupid shit like
>stop focusing on language!!!
as if there were more than two ways for us to communicate with each other on an imageboard besides text and pics while ignoring the topic I want to discuss:
>imagination, creation, reproduction, etc.
I'm beginning to get bored of your shenanigans. I'm convinced you're a low IQ name-dropping troll at this point.

>>20940245
Oh also, read Guenon's book on calculus now and give us a full review since nobody has done this on /lit/ and you are obviously equipped

>>20940245
>Read Kline's Loss of Certainty
Isn't Kline the infinitesimals guy? That's a huge blind spot of mine, especially considering how interesting Leibniz was as an almost-detour in the development of calculus as described here: >>20939508. I'm taking a quick look at the "reviews" of Kline's book in a Wikipedia, and they all sound like seething midwits. Sounds like a good book.

>>20940247
>as if there were more than two ways for us to communicate with each other on an imageboard besides text and pics while ignoring the topic I want to discuss

The point is you CANT discuss true knowledge. Words are too far removed from it. But fine go ahead talk about freewill and infinity even though those questions have already been answered countless times. I tried to steer you in the right path, but you are free to continue walking in circles.
If you truly understood you would agree with me, for I'm only a conductor of Truth. And yes I am single ;)

>>20940138
Expanding towards infinity

>>20940271
I can always explore the infinite amount of possible interpretations that a set of words can provide me. I can even add or subtract from them as much as I like. I'm not interested in certainty, I'm only interested in novelty. Let me handle whether I discover knowledge for myself along the way. That's my responsibility, not yours. All you need to do is be (at least a little bit) honest and have fun.

>>20940263
Yeah he was equally obsessed with how the utility of calculus actually arises from its concrete applications in the real historical contexts in which it arose (mainly early modern astronomy and mechanics), and with how in the 19th century the algebraizing of geometry severed geometry from all intuition while giving people the delusion that geometry "really was" algebraic "all along" "at its core" or something, as if intuitive geometry is not just another form or another thing that can be modelled/interacted with mathematically but is "subordinate to" the more "foundational" algebraic geometry (which is crypto founded on assumptions smuggled in from the, itself poorly founded and only assumed correct because of its utility in many fields, calculus).

I believe he was a pragmatist philosopher. He cites Whitehead's pragmatist writings.

>>20940287
Also the best possible review something can have if a bunch of overtrained overspecialized reviewer/redditor midwits are scared to touch it because it wasn't on their syllabus

>>20940280
> I'm not interested in certainty, I'm only interested in novelty.
Yikes, so youre a sophist. Thats way worse than a misguided pursuer of truth. I truly hate what this place has become.
Dont bother responding since I have gladly left

>>20940287
>>20940294
can't promise you anything. I'm shipping out to basic soon, and my philosophical interests may change after that. but thank you for letting me know about Kline. start from Klein, move onto Kline.

>>20940305
What's wrong with novelty? If you know you don't know the truth, then seeking new approaches is the most justified action one can take. You'd know that if you were smart and not a posturing midwit.

>>20940307
I wouldn't worry too much - Kline is way way more basic and straightforward than Klein. Klein took me 3 or 4 reads to actually understand, Kline is just a mathematician who isn't stupid. You can skim over Loss of Certainty quickly if you know anything about maths, and his history of maths is just fun and otherwise pretty standard, if you already know maths it's just telling you how the concepts you already know arose historically, with the most important bits being the calculus chapters.

Actually can I recommend one more book to you, also pretty short: From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe by Koyre.

>>20940129
>If you believe modern cosmology space is finite and unbounded.
Inside the universe maybe. Theres no reason to believe at the edge of the universe is a wall with 'not even nothing' beyond it

>>20939508
Didn't newton use infinitesimals himself.?

>>20940342
>the edge of the universe
What edge? Is there an edge of the earth?

>>20940207
The term and concept infinity excites you, you have some phantomagasmic expierience when you think for a second or so about the word and term. Power, overwhelming, sublimity, excess, sparkly colors and explosions and fractals and flashing lights. Why, what about, are you interested in infinity? What causes us to get our fill of our interest.

Will you always be excited about the idea of infinity, or it's mystery is what attracts you. Maybe the thought it will always be mysterious attracts you.

You like to know and understand, the mysterious and unknown attracts you, so you might grapple with it and know it. Then move on to the next thing.

Perhaps infinity is the crown cherry icing on cake idea that you will never run out of things to find mysterious and intersting, to gain knowledge and understand.

But what if there were no new things, what if you learned it all, then what might we do

>>20940247
>imagination, creation, reproduction, etc
What do you want to talk about these things?

>>20940379
>Is there an edge of the earth?
Start at the core, and walk straight, if youre in space youve gone too far.

The ground is the solid edge, the upper atmosphere 'zones is a gas edge. It's effect extends beyond it's edge via it's interaction with the gravity field to move the moon;

But yes a little tiny part in the greater system is not entirely analog to a possible fact of the entirety of system as whole, or the system of all systems

>>20940413
So the surface of the earth has no edge is what you mean. So again I ask what edge of the universe are you talking about? There is no reason an edge has to be there.

>>20940327
>Actually can I recommend one more book to you, also pretty short: From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe by Koyre.
I remember dealing with Koyre briefly when I was writing a seminar paper on the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. So, I know a little bit about his biography and some of his works on Leibniz-Clarke. However, my views have changed so much on the philosophy of science so much that I'm not sure that I fully understood him. I'll try my best to re-sketch what I read without rambling for too long.

I know that Koyre makes Galileo out to be a "Platonist" (I don't want to say this anymore lol) in the way he "abstracted away" the universe to understand the laws of gravity. And it makes sense that some things intuitively cannot be tested outside of a vacuum, like dropping a 10 lbs of feathers and 10 lbs of bricks, so it would take a mountain of intuition to understand that outside of experiment. But Koyre was completely wrong about Galileo's inability to perform replicable, precise experiments. I forget what Koyre had to say about the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence, except that Newton *did* believe that space was the sensorium of God, that Newton was ghost-writing Clarke's responses, and that Newton truly believed that gravity ("occult forces") was the hand of God. Koyre also at one point linked up with Leo Strauss, who is well known for being an "esoteric" reader. Make of that what you will, but that leads him to be more delightfully conspiratorial, I think.

Looking back, I imagine that both Newton and Leibniz would be engaging in a strange form of "Platonism", even if intuition states that Leibniz would be more stereotypically Platonic. We would also like to pigeonhole Newton as an empiricist, given his Anglo chops and his Lockeian friends, but in my opinion, he's truly more like a strange Enlightenment-esque union of rationalism and empiricism that predates Kant (I observe phenomena, I write mathematical equations, and then infamously "I make no hypotheses.") who lays the foundation for Kant. Newton was a political "institutionalist," a mystic, an alchemist, an obsessed religious radical, but not a political radical like Locke and his broader milieu were. And if Locke could be suspected of being irreligious in his empiricism (Show me God! Oh wait you can't!), then Newton must be brought up as a counterweight, as nobody believed in God harder than this crazy Arian nigga.

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>>20940327
>>20940423
On a funny note, Newton and Clarke also managed to "sway" the philosophically-minded Princess Caroline, the student of Leibniz who sponsored the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, away from Leibniz's worldview with an experimental "demonstration" of a vacuum in action, credits to the Royal Society. Leibniz thought true vacuums were impossible. So did Princess Caroline. Poor Leibniz wasted his last years in damp Hanover, denied the one opportunity to realize his dreams and come to London, the bustling center of intellectualism at the time. He was about to make it, only to have conniving *nglos converting his shining jewel (he had no kids of his own) to *nglicism with an act of sophistry, then burying his legacy in unjustified obscurity because of petty academic quibbles.

You know what, thank you for bringing up Koyre, anon. It was an unexpected but fruitful detour. I totally forgot about him and the fact that he covered the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, one of my favorite philosophical pieces I've ever read in my life. At the time, I was so inept at thinking about the debate about space and time in the correspondence from a philosophical perspective 6 months ago. So, I just focused on the hidden politics in the correspondence regarding monarchism and free will instead. But now I might be able to return to the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence with fresher eyes and glean something new. Maybe even think about monadology, the universal language, algebra, his love of Plato, etc. Absolutely wonderful. I greatly appreciate it!

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>>20940354
Huh, you're right. I suppose Newton did use fluxions among other things. Leibniz was an infinitesimal purist though, and infinitesimals were also caught up with his philosophy of monads.

>>20940392
What do you think about it?

>>20940382
Life is finite. But I want the power of infinity to explore the finite I have while walking on the narrow path of the Good. Life is always novel with the right mindset, so I don't think I'll ever get bored.

>>20940423
>so it would take a mountain of intuition to understand that outside of experiment.
to understand that they would both accelerate at the same rate*** because, you know, air resistance, no true vacuum, etc.

>>20939220
A lot of this talk about increasing abstraction away from place (point, monad, space, etc.) reminds me of V. I. Arnold's criticism of Bourbaki-style mathematics.
>Apart from French mathematicians, the French reforms also met with harsh criticism from Soviet-born mathematician Vladimir Arnold, who argued that in his time as a student and teacher in Moscow, the teaching of mathematics was firmly rooted in analysis and geometry, and interweaved with problems from classical mechanics; hence, the French reforms cannot be a legitimate attempt to emulate Soviet scientific education. In 1997, while speaking to a conference on mathematical teaching in Paris, he commented on Bourbaki by stating: "genuine mathematicians do not gang up, but the weak need gangs in order to survive." and suggested that Bourbaki's bonding over "super-abstractness" was similar to groups of mathematicians in the 19th century who had bonded over anti-Semitism.
Weird to bring up anti-Semitism, since the Bourbaki group is disproportionately Jewish, and kabbalistic-style abstraction is famously Jewish, but I think he has a point. You can see the prejudices of Arnold's Soviet materialism coming out of him because he senses that something isn't quite right with pure abstraction. Analytic geometry? That's fine, as long as it's connected to mechanics. But is it really? Perhaps the whole project is bunk, and we just don't know it yet.

>shower thoughts
Stopped reading there

It's gonna take me a bit to shake off the events from this book. Ironically it brought me closer to Christianity despite it containing so much crudeness and brutality. Parental neglect is a bitch. Parental neglect and moralism is even worse.
Also, meaning of the word civilisation is based in all sorts of restrictions. Here the devils are the unrestrained beasts that include mainly emotions that characters in the book cannot handle. That being the case, love is strictly punished. Possibly any strong unrestrained emotion would then be labelled a beast and punished severely.
Poor girl. Yoruba people didn't do her dirty like that despite their rituals and primitive behaviour. Maybe they could accept more of that unrestrained life? Pretty ironic considering their position.
Virtudes is an interesting character as well, with all the asthma, large stature, and mid-day napping.
The book shook me a bit, I don't know what to read next. Probably will stay for a couple of days without reading, or just read some short stories. Bless up, Gabo.

>>20940444
interesting

>>20940418
>So the surface of the earth has no edge is what you mean. So again I ask what edge of the universe are you talking about? There is no reason an edge has to be there.
I don't mean an edge like a wall, but there are a finite number of galaxies.

There earth has a finite number of atoms and those almost equally distant from the center of the earth and furthest from the center, is the boundry of earth as an atomic object.

Now imagine, atoms also make up the universe, but they form bigger structures, galaxies, so imagine the universe is akin to the earth as galaxies are akin to atoms;

Eventually in any direction you go in the universe, you will reach the last galaxy on that side.

Don't say there are infinite galaxies, because in doing so you would be speaking without thinking at all. Maybe over infinite time, galaxies die and are born so there could be an on going ( infinite) number, but at any given time there can not exist a theoretically uncountable amount

>>20940392
>>imagination, creation, reproduction, etc
>What do you want to talk about these things?
>>20940444
>What do you think about it

Kind of self evident. Do you mean creation as in the world and reproduction as life, or as an extension of imagination, in art terms

>>20939508
>https://progressivegeographies.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/the-place-of-geometry.pdf
Amazing article. On Descartes (who, in contrast to Plato, seems to be a maestro of... division), and Newton:
>In reply to a letter from Mersenne, which mentions that the mathematician Desargues has heard Descartes is giving up geometry, Descartes says:
>I have only resolved to give up abstract geometry, that is to say, research into questions which serve only to exercise the mind; and I am doing this in order to have more time to cultivate another sort of geometry, which takes as its questions the explanation of the phenomena of nature.35
>What we find here is in some ways a reversal of the move made by Thales. Geometry is no longer the Platonic ideal of mental exercise, but a science of the real world. Geometry and physics have the same objectum, ‘the difference consists just in this, that physics considers its object not only as a true and real being, but as actually existing as such, while mathematics considers it merely as possible, and as something which does not actually exist in space, but could do so’. 36 For example, in the Discourse on the Method, Descartes says that the ‘object dealt with by geometricians’ is ‘like [emphasis added] a continuous body or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and height or depth, divisible into various parts which could have various shapes and sizes and be moved or transposed in all sorts of ways’. 37 Geometry is no longer simply an abstraction from being, but is seen as a generalization of being. What Descartes does is to see geometry as equivalent to algebra. Just as algebra is symbolic logistic, geometry is a symbolic science. It is this, rather than the simple equation of arithmetic and geometry that is his most radical break with the past. 38
>As Jacob Klein has shown, ‘extension has, accordingly, a twofold character for Descartes: It is “symbolic” – as the object of a “general algebra”, and it is “real” – as the “substance” of the corporal world.’ So, not only is Descartes moving geometry from abstract mental exercise to practical science – the foundation of physics, a study of the world – he assumes that the insights of geometry can tell us about the world.

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>>20939508
>>20941391
>The concept of extension is not simply a geometrical property, but a physical property. Indeed, as Heidegger recognizes, it is for Descartes ‘the fundamental ontological determination of the world’ (GA2, 89). The reason is a critique: at once negative and positive. It criticizes the position of scholasticism and provides the foundation for scientific knowledge (GA33, 94). It is the symbolic objectivity of extension within the framework of the mathesis universalis that allows it to explain the being of the corporal world. ‘Only at this point has the conceptual basis of “classical” physics, which has since been called “Euclidean space”, been created. This is the foundation on which Newton will raise the structure of his mathematical science of nature.’
>What this means, and this is the crucial point, is that not only is the understanding of space as ‘non-Euclidean’ possible, but there is no such thing as Euclidean space. What we call Euclidean space is actually a seventeenth-century invention, based no doubt on the postulates of Euclid’s Elements, but crucially introducing the idea that this is constituent of reality, whatever that might mean. Euclid, like Plato, sees his geometry as a mathematical system. It is the generalization of this to explain the world that is the crucial element introduced in the seventeenth century. 40 Now, not only does this introduce this word ‘space’ but, by conceiving of geometrical lines and shapes in terms of numerical co-ordinates, which can be divided, it turns something that is thetos into athetos, positioned into unpositioned. Indeed for Descartes, it is the very nature of a body, res extensa, that it is divisible. 41 At the very beginning of the Geometry Descartes boasts that ‘all problems in geometry can be simply reduced to such terms that a knowledge of the lengths of certain straight lines is sufficient for their construction’. 42 That is, geometric problems can be reduced to equations, the length (i.e., quantity) of lines: a problem of number. The continuum of geometry is transformed into a form of arithmetic. The mode of connection of the geometrical for the Greeks is characterized by the synekhes; the series of numbers – where no touching is necessary – by the ephekses. Descartes’s geometry, because of its divisibility, can only be ephekses. Geometry loses position just as place is transformed into space. 43

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>>20939220
it is a small mind that sees contradiction everywhere.

it is more often poor explanation or misunderstanding.

chunky monkey