Add another piece of meat to the fire of my fireplace Aristotelian. I do a little 'lost time on the day of Christmas, a Catholic, while around me there are those who casually watch the programs more or less on TV Christmas revelry after a few too many around the table ... time lost because it is not exactly what you expect to do during Christmas day, write a piece of philosophy, and lacking for too long because the shop, and I would not that not many of these visitors end up disaffected discharged short pages.
Then affix a contribution, certainly incomplete, but serves the sole purpose of continuing to weave the thread of a story that a little 'time I hope to become a beautiful new dress.
days ago I was talking with a dear friend, a wide culture Catholic intellectual, who asked, looking a bit 'to provoke discussion, "Why in the debate between mythos and logos , the Catholic Church opted for the second? There is nothing logical in Catholicism, starting with the founding myths (when I used the word "myths" he made a crooked face:), should rather opt for the myth, right? But in Christianity logos appear at the beginning of John's Gospel, where Jesus identified with the Logos is the means by which God created the world and incarnate in Jesus Christ, it has also become the savior. "
continuing to argue the ideas of the Gospel of John, who later find their conclusion in the definition of the two dogmas of the Trinity and the incarnation of God, made in the Council of Nicaea. "The term logos in the Christian - He said - is traditionally rendered in Italian as a verb , recovering with a cast of Latin verbum . More correctly, however, should be made with word. "
" It 's strange - I said - "just Christians that have prompted the mythos the edge of philosophical reflection, as alien to the traditions of the Bible, and that they just make the confusion between logos and words. "
"But no, instead - he says - is perfectly in the intentions of the Church, to avoid leaks excessively mystical interpretations, and instead try to keep our feet on the ground. Despite the different possible meanings, the logos refers mainly to the intelligibility of the cosmos, the ability to understand and explain the rational principles that govern it. The universe for the Christian must first be intelligible, a place of dialogue between God and man. The human person created by God in His image and likeness, is the only being enabled to recognize these meanings and decipher the information. We must avoid falling into relativism and mysticism to Ficino, forsitan in praesentia somniamus , remember? "(Because you understand the" remember? "At this point I have to specify that the speaker, the current dean of the school unified classical-scientific language T *****, My ex is a literature professor, who later became one of my closest friends).
He continues: "The university is a privileged place for dialogue between God and man in this dialogue you scientists share fully, often unconsciously, every time that you recognize the objective nature of intelligibility, a logos ut ratio, but an otherness, a logos ut verbum that attracts you to the search for truth. From our point of view, is the "Omega point" of Teilhard de Chardin, the maximum expression, purpose of evolution. "
After our chat in front of a (several, actually) short of cognac, I thought back to these fine words, and good fun to do them and enjoy them. And the content of the same, of course, and their possible link with my longstanding interest in the cognitive sciences, and my renewed interest and recent Aristotelian philosophy, in particular meaning of "status of the borders" I'm trying to draw.
I read somewhere (I find among my notes, unfortunately I lost the link came from) similar to my findings about the Christian belief in the Creator Logos, in the sense of having favored the development of a scientific mentality in which finds a place faith in the rationality of the world. Thus supporting the need to look for roots of a stable order and universal belief apparently shared by some scientists. In fact, I told myself, this may be an association only functional in the sense that a certain order of ideas, whatever their objective basis, could have accidentally ("historically") to encourage the use of a theory of knowledge more appropriate analysis Science. But put the Verbum the foundation of reality, serves to make the dialogue between man and nature nothing more than a metaphor for the dialogue between man and God
Always in my notes, I find another excerpt that reads "A possible reflection on the scientific debate may be, for example the question about the "Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" (E. Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences , "Comunications in Pure and Applied Mathematics" 13 (1960), pp. 1-14, JD Barrow, Because the world is mathematician? Roma-Bari 1992). Would always be possible to envisage a universe that did not have the property of being so easily mathematization like ours, where the main physical laws do not meet full convergence, as can be represented with simple scientific laws, where the geometry of space, for example, does not allow potential decreases with the inverse radial distance, or the law of gravity to be adjusted by the inverse of its square. Although the human mind exerts a clear projection of his fees in the physical world, trying to mathematize, this has to be both mathematization (emphasis Boston). There are reasons to reject the idea that it is the only scientist to impose such an order in nature. The language of scientific rationality, logic, like mathematics, is not a completely conventional language, one among many. "Things are exactly the opposite - Polkinghorne notes - The physical difficulty mastering mathematical techniques because experience has taught them that they are the best way, indeed the only, to understand the world physical. We choose this language because it is the only one with which the universe speaks to us "( Religion and Science, 1987, p. 72). Behind the idea of \u200b\u200ba cosmos "capable of speaking" is not difficult to see that one of its constitutive law with an original word. [...] It is no surprise, then, over the "comprehensiveness" of the universe - something that aroused the wonder of Einstein - and even the fact that the same elementary particles are all strictly identical. Still wonder about the latter's attention John Barrow, pointing out that if all the electrons are not exactly alike, and behave as such of footballs, each slightly different, the whole universe would become unintelligible (see Theories of Everything. The Quest for Ultimate Explanation, Oxford 1991, p. 197, a physicist, I must say that last remark of Barrow on equality of the particles is quite unintelligible, note Bostonian).
Here is the point where the mythos , kicked out the door, falls out the window. With the idea that nature, even nature, carries the stamp of God, manifested in the harmony of the universe understandable. The Universe speaks in mathematical language, the language of God transcends the body language of mathematics and the human mind, in this view that I think I can define without problems "platonic." In a nutshell:
- mathematics is an objective characteristic and the real universe, mathematical truths are universal, absolute and safe, mathematical truths are being discovered;
- beliefs about the mathematics of human beings have no influence on the same mathematics, the mathematics would be the same even if there were no human beings, and possibly other worlds than this;
- mathematicians, scientists are at a higher level, in a hypothetical hierarchy of the sciences, because the truth is discovered valid in any possible universe, not just those accessible to our experience;
- because the logic can be formalized in terms of mathematics, the mathematics itself is the true nature of rationality, furthermore, since the rationality of defining what is uniquely human, mathematicians are the highest expression of rationality;
- the mathematics of nature, and in particular physics lies in same natural phenomena, such as the fact that the planets follow elliptical orbits, which are nested fractals in the shapes of leaves, the shells of snails follow logarithmic spirals, which implies that the book of Nature is written in mathematical language, and that only those who understand math can understand nature;
(by G. Lakoff and RE Nunez, Where Mathematics Comes From Basic Books, Perseus, New York, 2000)
This is what Lakoff and Nunez have called "the romance of mathematics, which is perhaps more appropriate to define" the mythology of mathematics. " As Lakoff and Nunez argue, two cognitive scientists, linguist and psychologist on the first second, the study of cognitive science is often found that the evidence in conflict with the individual mythologies. Our conscious beliefs on subjects like time, causality, morality, politics, are often inconsistent with respect to each of unconscious conceptual systems. It is not unusual for people to get angry when they are shown how their unconscious contradicts their beliefs more expensive and entrenched, especially in sensitive areas such as ethics, religion, or politics. Something similar is also found in mathematics: speaking of professional mathematicians, it is extremely difficult to get across the concept of "mythology of mathematics." The popular idea is that a subject as complex and specialized math can speak advisedly professionals only, and that epistemologists, philosophers, psychologists, behavioral, cognitive scientists, but even the nearly-related as the physical, that can not be piecemeal, schematic and not professional. The "romance of mathematics" is the deep part of their vision of life, their deepest identity. And I doubt, in fact, that a mathematician who read the words I am about to write, share.
fact, affirm and support (in the company of someone else) the radical estrangement of mathematics from natural science. The math is different from all the sciences, it is totally "inside" the human mental space, while the other sciences are "external." The sciences are made from the analysis of natural events, perceived by the human mind through the senses at their disposal, within the ranges of variability of biological sensors supplied for this purpose. Mathematics is the mental system ("language") by which the brain organizes and analyzes the sensory perception of natural events. Mathematics is the natural language for the formalization of the relationship between "inside" the body and "outside" of nature. For other reports, the brain prefers to use other forms of language, such as verbal, musical, and so on.
In this sense, mathematics is a pure product of human beings. It uses the limited resources of the human brain, and these limits, it is formed not only by the physical limits of our bodies. The parts of the human cognitive system that generate the most advanced mathematical skills are the normal adult, common to every human being. How long have shown cognitive science, a very small part of these abilities are innate, hard-wired in the human brain, typically the ability to count up to four or five. The further development of higher mathematics is due to the mechanisms of conceptual metaphors and logical inference embedded in the cognitive mechanisms of the brain.
to these ideas (will?) Support, at its own knowledge or without any fault or strict liability, the ghost of Aristotle Aristotle August, with my / his status boundaries ... I hope ☺
