First, listen to Leonard Susskind talking about Eugine Wigner's famous phrase "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences". Susskind says something to the effect of "Why wouldn't it work? The physical world is intelligible. Things happen for a reason." And since the devlopment of mathematics started with abstraction from concrete objects in the physical world, that correspondence with the physical world is a necessary condition that is built-in to the resulting formal system. From this correspondence theory we get the modern-day idea of the distinction between truth and proof formalised by Alfred Tarski. Penelope Maddy gives many examples of this development from applied to pure mathematics in this excellent essay How Applied Mathematics Became Pure.
And one answer as to why some might doubt that this is logically necessary, was given by Karl Jung, who observed that many people had trouble understanding his work, because they failed to see that the Psyche is real.
And Jung meant that the Psyche is a fundamental fact, so it is as real as any physical material body, such as water. Now listen to how Carl Jung explains personality as being produced by the Psyche according to the unique collection of life experiences which identify that person:
In this essay on the "relational semantics" of physical measurement written nine years ago, I try to explain this notion of Psyche, which I refer to there as simply consciousness, from the point of view of physics and information theory, and this has a direct bearing on personal psychology too, which I touch on in the final paragraph.
So we have made a connection between mathematics and human personality, which Hannah Fry demonstrates on video here.
At 18 mins 33 (but watch at least the first 20 minutes to get the full effect) Hannah Fry says, about the beliefs of the Pythogorean Cult (followers of Pythagoras, living in what is now Italy), "Maths was just as real as the music was, and it was even neater and more elegant than anything the human mind could conceive of." The beauty of this mathematical structure in music was made concrete by the Baroque composer J.S. Bach, and in this post, there is a lecture by Hannah Fry which includes a striking example of Bach's music, and considers how mathematical algorithms could be used as the basis of governing laws, not those of the development Jung describes, of individual human personalities, but of whole societies of individual personalties which work together for the benefit of the society as a whole. See this post, entitled Radical Networks.
Now, to see the connection with human personality, read Plato's Crito, but don't try to understand it at an intellectual level, until you feel an urgent sense of curiosity coming from an emotional level within you, as to why such an apparently intelligent man would be motivated to do what Socrates is doing here: refusing an opportunity to escape from what is quite obviously an unjust death sentence that has been handed down to him. I offer this advice, because I found that if I could first engage with a philosopher at an emotional, irrational level, then it was much easier to follow that with an understanding at an intellectual, abstract level. Otherwise, it's like learning how to read music, and how to play it, without ever having heard music before. All I mean by emotional engagement, is that, as you read this book, you imagine you are a method actor, preparing to play the part of Socrates in this play. I say imagine you are an actor, because the effects this will have on your life if you were to actually apply the method would be, ... well, let us just say that they would be spectacular! 😂
See Crito:
And one answer as to why some might doubt that this is logically necessary, was given by Karl Jung, who observed that many people had trouble understanding his work, because they failed to see that the Psyche is real.
And Jung meant that the Psyche is a fundamental fact, so it is as real as any physical material body, such as water. Now listen to how Carl Jung explains personality as being produced by the Psyche according to the unique collection of life experiences which identify that person:
In this essay on the "relational semantics" of physical measurement written nine years ago, I try to explain this notion of Psyche, which I refer to there as simply consciousness, from the point of view of physics and information theory, and this has a direct bearing on personal psychology too, which I touch on in the final paragraph.
So we have made a connection between mathematics and human personality, which Hannah Fry demonstrates on video here.
At 18 mins 33 (but watch at least the first 20 minutes to get the full effect) Hannah Fry says, about the beliefs of the Pythogorean Cult (followers of Pythagoras, living in what is now Italy), "Maths was just as real as the music was, and it was even neater and more elegant than anything the human mind could conceive of." The beauty of this mathematical structure in music was made concrete by the Baroque composer J.S. Bach, and in this post, there is a lecture by Hannah Fry which includes a striking example of Bach's music, and considers how mathematical algorithms could be used as the basis of governing laws, not those of the development Jung describes, of individual human personalities, but of whole societies of individual personalties which work together for the benefit of the society as a whole. See this post, entitled Radical Networks.
Now, to see the connection with human personality, read Plato's Crito, but don't try to understand it at an intellectual level, until you feel an urgent sense of curiosity coming from an emotional level within you, as to why such an apparently intelligent man would be motivated to do what Socrates is doing here: refusing an opportunity to escape from what is quite obviously an unjust death sentence that has been handed down to him. I offer this advice, because I found that if I could first engage with a philosopher at an emotional, irrational level, then it was much easier to follow that with an understanding at an intellectual, abstract level. Otherwise, it's like learning how to read music, and how to play it, without ever having heard music before. All I mean by emotional engagement, is that, as you read this book, you imagine you are a method actor, preparing to play the part of Socrates in this play. I say imagine you are an actor, because the effects this will have on your life if you were to actually apply the method would be, ... well, let us just say that they would be spectacular! 😂
See Crito:
Socrates: What a wonderful thing it would be, Crito, if the world could do good just as easily as it can do bad – but it can do neither of these, good or bad. People can do neither good nor bad and whatever they do they do it by chance.
This was the problem that was not properly solved in the Renaissance. It's the economics of Art.
And where we live is a city, like Athens, with laws.
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