Metaphysics of Mathematics

[Anonymous No.14102074]

I'm on the 2nd chapter and was following at first but he lost me when he started ranting about all of these old mathematicians and mathematical process I'm not familiar with

What is exactly the overall point of this chapter? Just explaining how math has been viewed at different points in history?

[Anonymous No.14102086]

>>14102074
>What is exactly the overall point of this chapter?

The same as with the comparisons of art, architecture, music, literature etc.

[Anonymous No.14102097]

>>14102074
Mathematics as a discipline exists for the sole purpose of describing reality, or more precisely our conception of it.

[Anonymous No.14102171]

>>14102074
>Just explaining how math has been viewed at different points in history?
He is comparing them to see if particular conceptions of math correspond to particular conceptions of space, time, causality, and destiny in a consistent manner. This entire work is one of comparative historiography.

[Anonymous No.14102659]

>>14102074
I'll dumb it down for you. In Spengler's theory there is no universality to mathematics, or any cultural form - each culture creates its own style of mathematics, just as it creates its own art or religion. The Greek prime symbol is the pure near and present i.e. they never bothered with anything in their culture that the eye can't physically see. Their high art was the sculpture, their ideal state form was the city-state, their mathematics peaked with Euclidean geometry. Greeks conceived of numbers only as physical lengths and magnitudes - they had no concept of zero because nothing can't be something. Everything in their culture had to be physically constituted, including their concept of what a number is.

Our culture is the exact opposite of ancient Greece. We relish what the eye can't see. We think of numbers as functions, so calculus is the preferred form of Western mathematics.

Example:
The Greeks thought of the number 5 as five physical counted objects, while we think of 5 almost like a symbol for something else, an abstract something in between 4 and 6 that doesn't have to be physically constituted.

[Anonymous No.14102703]

>>14102659
This stuff is absolutely fascinating to me btw, here's an excerpt from Amaury de Riencourt's ruminations on Chinese number theory.

[Anonymous No.14102738]

>>14102659
That's kinda interesting, I didn't know Spengler was a hardcore relativist

[Anonymous No.14102741]

>>14102097
All disciplines do that.

[Anonymous No.14102747]

>>14102738
It's his entire schtick. He is famous for the doom mongering but his analysis and relativism of human culture is the far larger and more interesting part of The Decline of the West (which gets the "worst titled book of the 20th century" award)

[Anonymous No.14102755]

>>14102747
His version of doom wasn't even very doomy. He thought we were entering the empire stage which means there would be another few centuries where the West prospered materially though its artistic spirit was dead.

The idea that our civilizaton will eventually fail is not pessimistic, literally all civilzations eventually end, the reverse perspective is just naive.

[Anonymous No.14102771]

>>14102755
Yeah well I'm just saying he offers a much more likely and consistent explanation of human history and how the West got to where it is today than the likes of Marx or Jared Diamond or any other linear causal theories of history.

[Anonymous No.14103362]

>>14102755
Eventually, for humanity to evolve, some civilization will have to break the mould and not eventually end.
IIt would be sad if it couldn't be the good guys.
A civilization that would stand the test of time.

[Anonymous No.14103551]

>>14102074
Mathematics is the most important field of philosophy to understand for making sense of a culture. The way a culture treats questions of mathematics will give you the entire problem solving framework and a rough outline of the metaphysic assumptions of the culture.

[Anonymous No.14103571]

>>14102738
He's worse than that. He's an idealist, so not only are cultures relative, but they're a kind of world-spirit in themselves, which produce their own populations (and all individuals are simply reflections of their dominant culture from various angles) and historical circumstances.

I'd be curious to hear what Spengler had to say about the diseases and plagues that wiped out the North American population, or about the Mongol hoards. Moments in history of total and sudden collapse.

[Anonymous No.14103584]

>>14102741
Firstly, no most fields do not even come close to "describing reality" beyond maybe particular instances of events contained within reality.

Secondly, Mathematics provides the framework for which the concept of reality is contained for a people and will give you an understanding of the way a people views all problems it encounters. Mathematics in itself is a metaphysic in that it describes through the concept of the "number" used within the math what exactly is the culture assumes to be the basis of "existence." The main example Spengler focuses on is the Greek concept of the number as a measure, meaning that their metaphysic was based entirely around corporeal form and the usage of comparisons of physically possible and tangible objects for analysis of reality.

He contrasts this against the Faustian number as an abstract representation and glimpse into the horizon. The number for the Faustian man doesn't represent a measure of anything that does exist, nor necessarily the potential of something that can exist but rather an entirely abstract existence which can be divorced from corporeal reality. The "number" of the Faustian man is an infinitely imprecise approximation of an ideal form which itself is mappable to many dimensions beyond just the 3 that would be meaningfully measurable. This sort of thing was of very serious interest to Descartes (hence the Cartesian coordinate system being talked about quite a lot in Death of the West).

[Anonymous No.14103826]

>>14102738
Um sweaty he supported the Nazis

[Anonymous No.14103892]

>>14103826
A Nazi supporter and a Relativist, a rather intriguing combination.

Incidentally, here is a cool Spengler quote to troll /pol/acks with
> and how much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!

[Anonymous No.14104037]

>>14103826
No he didn't, he was vehemently against Hitler and Nazi Germany - this is a fact if you read his works and writings. At most, he was an anti-semite - yet even then more from an abstract than personal basis though.

[Anonymous No.14104043]

>>14102738
Spengler is the actual relativist, as in at least trying and pretending to be consistent with it, rather than using it as a tool of critique and forgetting about it whenever a doctrine he believes in comes up.

>>14102747
He spent an autistic amount of time choosing the title and never deviated from it.

[Anonymous No.14104066]

>>14102755
>the reverse perspective is just naive.
Nothing justifies a notion of necessary death of a culture either. Unless you go into memetic about heat death of the universe whichu would involve timescales of dozens of billion of years.
Spengler himself bases his expectation on the idea that a culture becomes fossilized and decadent after having expressed what it could express in enthusiasm. He thinks such matured civilization can self maintain indefinitely until foreigners fuck them up.

[Anonymous No.14104647]

>>14104037
>At most, he was an anti-semite

really? how?