Re: Recent anti-semantic advances in Mathematics


george wrote:

Well, math is an abstraction that can only address abstraction.
But that doesn't mean that it is irrelevant to the physical world.
Suppose artists were restricted to painting only work that was
directly inspired by other works of art, and couldn't survey the
real world much any more. Their work would STILL resemble
the real world in a lot of ways, IF ONLY BY ACCIDENT.

My point is, you can't blame abstraction for being abstract;
that makes no more sense than blaming water for being wet.
The worls is the way it is. If some abstraction happens to be
sufficiently close to isomorphic to the real world to enable
experimental
predictions to be verified, well, THAT IS ALL you can ASK.


And is it not now true that the best that mathematics says it has to
offer, its par excellence of technicality, can only be described by the
meaningless term "abstract"?

Surely, this exemplifies my position - that mathematics is an
incommensurable. Mathematics is tracing out consistencies and failing
to recognise that no meaning can be drawn from tracing out
consistencies. All semantic terms in mathematics are mere invocations,
shorn of meaning.

.

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