|
Showing 1 - 7 of
7 matches in All Departments
Mathematics has stood as a bridge between the Humanities and the
Sciences since the days of classical antiquity. For Plato,
mathematics was evidence of Being in the midst of Becoming, garden
variety evidence apparent even to small children and the
unphilosophical, and therefore of the highest educational
significance. In the great central similes of The Republic it is
the touchstone ofintelligibility for discourse, and in the Timaeus
it provides in an oddly literal sense the framework of nature,
insuring the intelligibility ofthe material world. For Descartes,
mathematical ideas had a clarity and distinctness akin to the idea
of God, as the fifth of the Meditations makes especially clear.
Cartesian mathematicals are constructions as well as objects
envisioned by the soul; in the Principles, the work ofthe physicist
who provides a quantified account ofthe machines of nature hovers
between description and constitution. For Kant, mathematics reveals
the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge that is
neither the logical unpacking ofconcepts nor the record of
perceptual experience. In the Critique ofPure Reason, mathematics
is one of the transcendental instruments the human mind uses to
apprehend nature, and by apprehending to construct it under the
universal and necessary lawsofNewtonian mechanics.
Mathematics has stood as a bridge between the Humanities and the
Sciences since the days of classical antiquity. For Plato,
mathematics was evidence of Being in the midst of Becoming, garden
variety evidence apparent even to small children and the
unphilosophical, and therefore of the highest educational
significance. In the great central similes of The Republic it is
the touchstone ofintelligibility for discourse, and in the Timaeus
it provides in an oddly literal sense the framework of nature,
insuring the intelligibility ofthe material world. For Descartes,
mathematical ideas had a clarity and distinctness akin to the idea
of God, as the fifth of the Meditations makes especially clear.
Cartesian mathematicals are constructions as well as objects
envisioned by the soul; in the Principles, the work ofthe physicist
who provides a quantified account ofthe machines of nature hovers
between description and constitution. For Kant, mathematics reveals
the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge that is
neither the logical unpacking ofconcepts nor the record of
perceptual experience. In the Critique ofPure Reason, mathematics
is one of the transcendental instruments the human mind uses to
apprehend nature, and by apprehending to construct it under the
universal and necessary lawsofNewtonian mechanics.
Yves Bonnefoy's book of poems, Beginning and End of the Snow
followed by Where the Arrow Falls, combines two meditations in
which the poet's thoughts and a landscape reflect each other. In
the first, the wintry New England landscape he encountered while
teaching at Williams College evokes the dance of atoms in the
philosophical poem of Lucretius as well as the Christian doctrine
of death and resurrection. In the second, Bonnefoy uses the
luminous woods of Haute Provence as the setting for a parable of
losing one's way.
The problematic relation between logic and knowledge has given rise
to some of the most important works in the history of philosophy,
from Books VI-VII of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Prior and
Posterior Analytics, to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Mill's A
System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. It provides the title
of an important collection of papers by Bertrand Russell (Logic and
Knowledge. Essays, 1901-1950). However, it has remained an
underdeveloped theme in the last century, because logic has been
treated as separate from knowledge.This book does not hope to make
up for a century-long absence of discussion. Rather, its ambition
is to call attention to the theme and stimulating renewed
reflection upon it. The book collects essays of leading figures in
the field and it addresses the theme as a topic of current debate,
or as a historical case study, or when appropriate as both. Each
essay is followed by the comments of a younger discussant, in an
attempt to transform what might otherwise appear as a monologue
into an ongoing dialogue; each section begins with an historical
essay and ends with an essay by one of the editors.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Hampstead
Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, …
DVD
R66
Discovery Miles 660
Ab Wheel
R209
R149
Discovery Miles 1 490
|