Cancer Posted July 6, 2013 Report Share Posted July 6, 2013 Feh, the best philosophers could do was a thoroughly anthropocentric ... no, philosopher-centric ... universe, where only those wealthy enough (or with wealthy enough patrons) had the leisure to play the rhetorical games that passed for insight into how the world works. The plebe and slave classes gained nothing from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 6, 2013 Report Share Posted July 6, 2013 Syracuse's citizens gained more nasty ways to kill people. That's something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 6, 2013 Report Share Posted July 6, 2013 Yeah, but that's because Syracuse had Archimedes. Archimedes was one of us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 6, 2013 Report Share Posted July 6, 2013 *chuckle* reminded of the alleged inscription above The Academy: "Let None But Geometers Enter Here". Then who wrote the book (literally) on life, the universe, and everything? Plato with the Timaeus. And also reminded of fellows like Democritus who were just as much mathematicians as philosophers. yep, just as much science/maths in the ancient Greek culture as philosophy. Two sides of the same coin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 7, 2013 Report Share Posted July 7, 2013 Canadian house prices at unprecedented multiples of income! Canadian debt at unprecedented levels of income! Canadian year-over-year income stagnation unprecedented! Hey! Look at the three unrelated facts before getting back to worrying about our upcoming housing price bust-driven recession. Because, y'know, what can you do? Cash out all your investments and bury the money in a coffee can in the back yard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 7, 2013 Report Share Posted July 7, 2013 Then why aren't today's philosophers geometers? Many are proudly and dedicatedly ignorant of mathematics and disciplines that lean heavily upon mathematics today, as C. P. Snow famously pointed out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 7, 2013 Report Share Posted July 7, 2013 Everyone loves pi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 Then why aren't today's philosophers geometers? Many are proudly and dedicatedly ignorant of mathematics and disciplines that lean heavily upon mathematics today' date=' as C. P. Snow famously pointed out.[/quote'] what was that quote may i ask? And asking vice versa: why aren't mathematicians philosophers? The answer would be simple: they forgot their past, or more likely the educators in the universities over the centuries didn't teach them the connection between the two areas. I'd guess that since the scientific era the predominance is on specialisation in a discipline whether it be physics, or chemistry, or French history during the 17th century; one gets caught up in their specialised field of knowledge and misses the big/unified picture. Also there are pros/cons to this modern approach, don't get me wrong about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 If the C P Snow book is relating to his book The Two Cultures, I'd like to read it some day. And also the critique by F. R. Leavis. http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic...two-cultures-1 http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic...cance-c-p-snow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 Yeah, it's The Two Cultures. Probably available for free on-line somewhere. Bertrand Russell, actually, was both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 Yeah, it's The Two Cultures. Probably available for free on-line somewhere. Bertrand Russell, actually, was both.gah, there should be a paragraph break after the first two sentences there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 There is only one Culture, and it has awesome spaceship names! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 Only one throat, eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 8, 2013 Report Share Posted July 8, 2013 I don't think the Culture worries about s.aureus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 Yeah' date=' it's The Two Cultures. Probably available for free on-line somewhere. Bertrand Russell, actually, was both.[/quote']Bertrand Russell probably was both, he made contributions to maths and philosophy, however i have little interest in him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 Yeah' date=' it's The Two Cultures. Probably available for free on-line somewhere.[/quote'] here: http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/...2-cultures.pdf now to find "part two" The Second Look revision/update to that lecture. edit: original New Stateman newspaper article also online here: http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-capital/2013/01/c-p-snow-two-cultures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 so thinking about The Two Cultures a bit, it really in essence describes the "right brain" and "left brain". Those more right brain would prefer the arts/humanities and vice versa. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 I'm so cultured, I watchend a Mozart opera once. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 to a degree, yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 Which degree? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 9, 2013 Report Share Posted July 9, 2013 I gather that Snow was railing against the British education system and the social structure that abetted it, where people with a carefully cultivated willful ignorance of quantitative sciences were the end product, while those with skills in science, engineering, and mathematics were denigrated and sneered at, even though it was their bailiwick that created the wealth that permitted the mathophobes to maintain their lifestyle. A repeat of the historical gentry-versus-trades (or even poms-versus-oz) phenomenon. Lord Melbourne's comment about liking his Order of the Garter best because there was "no damned nonsense about merit" about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 in a sense yes, Snow was arguing precisely that, that quantitative sciences should be taught in British schools. However today we may have gone too far, I'd like to see some of the humanities taught (not that i know much about the British education system, yet). And I'm p-ed off that logic isn't taught in school, either maths-based and or argumentative logic (derived from Aristotle, eg: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 Yeah, students in 101 are taken by surprise when I label a common wrong answer on an exam a formal logic fallacy. And they really can't handle multi-step inferences. Two is dicey; more than two is approximately hopeless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 ... Interference pattern? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 No, I don't try to cover those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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