From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Dec 24 2000 - 01:55:43 MST
On Thursday, December 21, 2000 5:06 PM Steve Nichols steve@multisell.com
wrote:
> Didn't Russell and Whitehead show that 'logic' supplied the
> rules underlying both mathematics and language in Principia
> Mathematica ... maths is purely logically, and cannot be
> "proven by science empirically."
They tried to this, but, I believe, they failed. So do many others,
including Chrasles S. Chihara (_Constructability and Mathematical
Existence_), Philip Kitcher (see his _The Nature of Mathematical
Knowledge_), Morris Kline (see his _Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty_),
and Penelope Maddy (see her _Realism in Mathematics_).
> >Einstein's E=MC^2 was a philosophical
> >argument until science proved it later.
>
> This a claim from Physics, not algebra ... or academic
> philosophy come to that.
Not actually. Einstein made certain assumptions and deduced things from
them. In some ways, his assumptions were bolder, more consistent, and more
parsimonious than those of others.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
My "Rand the Libertarian," published in the current issue of _The Thought_,
is now up viewable on the web at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/RandLib.html
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