Is mathematics the last refuge of Platonism in the sciences?
Reuben Hersh, in his excellent book "What is mathematics, really?" thinks so:
"Heaven and the Mind of God are no longer heard of in academic discourse. Yet most mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics continue to believe in an
ndependent, immaterial abstract world—a remnant of
Plato’s Heaven, attenuated, purified, bleached, with all entities but the mathematical expelled. Platonism without God is like the grin on Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat. The cat had a grin. Gradually the cat disappeared, until all was gone—except the grin. The grin remained without the cat."
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I suspect it is because that area of the brain is better developed in mathematicians. If you use your abstract reasoning all the time, your perspective would naturally slant toward an abstract view don't you think? Like a painters see in hues would not a mathematician see in abstracts?
Davesnothere
Level 7
Oct 25, 2019
0
I paint and I don't see in hues. I have an idea that I want to put forth and creating an image is one of the manners in which I happen to think I do it well. The idea manifested is the goal and colors are simply one of the tools in reaching that goal. That's not to say that all painters have the same process as I do and there probably are some that see in hues. But my point is that it's not a universal concept among painters and that may imply that there is no generic standard in relation to mathematicians either.
@redbai Not my point, I did not mean painters literally see in hues. It was a metaphor for how we reason, how we percieve.
"I have an idea that I want to put forth and creating an image is one of the manners in which I happen to think I do it well. The idea manifested is the goal"
and so you reason your way to your imagined ideal, your goal. Right? Its a qaulity and a set of skills combined, the way you think creatively and the way you execute that to achieve a goal.
I suspect the same thing with mathematicians. Long hours of contemplating in abstracts would make an abstract worldview all the easier.
Nor am I ststing it as some fact, just they way it occurs to me.
How do you know, that the grin remained?
Jolanta
Level 9
Oct 25, 2019
0
The grin remained in the mind of the author, a cokehead who liked his girlfriends about age 10...........this is your "authority"?
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