Re: [-empyre-] Viewing Axalotls => Henry

["info.saij-netart" <info@saij-netart.net>]

Hi everybody,

Yes, Henry, as you said "the above is useful" : thanks !
I've not a good knowledge of maths and
what you wrote is easy to understand : I appreciate.
May be you brought me something that a friend of mine calls
"the philosophy of maths".

Best

Isabel

am 20.03.2004 19:45 Uhr schrieb Henry Warwick unter
henry.warwick@sbcglobal.net:

> 1. 2+2 does not equal 4 in only a handful of specious cases: example - when
> 2+2 is in base 3 or 4, then, 2+2 would = 11 or 10, but the VALUE represented
> would be identical in any case.
> 
> 2. To insist that 2+2?4, *is* a political statement, and a distinctly
> depressingly fascist one: viz. Orwell. 1984.
> 
> 3. A very interesting discussion about the reality of numbers exists in an
> Excellent Book: "The Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene, a French
> mathematician and neuroscientist.
> 
> 4. There is no point number 4.
> 
> 5. If someone tells you that 2+2?4, and a bunch of your BS detectors don't
> go off immediately, I suggest you have them re-calibrated.
> 
> 6. Dehaene's fundamental findings are that discreet values do exist in the
> universe and are countable by intelligences other than human. This means
> that addition and subtraction are also properties in the universe. However:
> this doesn't permit the calculus, as it is as much a function of our
> language center and complex reasoning capacity as it is of any instinctive
> number sense. 
> 
> 7. This leads to a classic problem in mathematics between the neoplatonists
> and formalists of the world versus those who see mathematics more as a
> social construction. I think Dehaene's research doesn't answer this problem,
> but it does clear some of the brambles: if numeracy is a fundamental
> property of  complex functioning species (as it has been shown to be with
> apes and crows and other creatures) then we know that this "number sense" is
> innate and ahistorical.
> 
> We can then look at other aspects of how this number sense is used by
> various societies over time and the inhabitation of this sense by the
> language function by various societies in time to greater or lesser degrees.
> 
> Some societies count similar to this:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, more, a lot, while
> other societies develop differential calculus. I'm sure there are political
> considerations behind those differences, but that's a different discussion.
> 
> I hope the above is useful.
> 
> my very best to all on this fine list,
> 
> HW
> 
> 
> "There are 10 kinds of people in this world: People who can count in binary
> and people who can't."
> 
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