[MD] Language

[X Acto]

On 9 Feb 2010 at 9:16, Steven Peterson wrote:

>  Hi Platt,
> 
> 
> > > If mathematics as a symbolic language doesn't provide an accurate
> > > reflection of how the world really is, why does science depend on it and
> > why
> > > do we benefit so much from it?
> >
> Hammers and screw drivers are useful tools. Note that we never ask about
> them, does this hammer correctly correspond to The-Way-Things-Really-Are? By
> the same token, it is not required that we ask such questions about the tool
> called mathematics.
> 
Hi Steve, 

The reason we don't question is because such tools are obviously 
attuned to the world as it really is. By the same token, we don't question 
whether swallowing cyanide is injurious to one's health. 

Best,
Platt

Ron:
This is a perfect illustration to my point. It was with the Pythagoreans
that the concept of "substance" emerged. I think RMP's real SOM
bogeyman is the Pythagoreans developing into Neopythagoreanism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopythagoreanism


The good as the one, encapsulated....fixed...it was'nt
Aristotle or Plato it seems...

"They went back to the later period of Plato's thought, 
the period when Plato endeavoured to combine his doctrine 
of Ideas with the Pythagorean number-theory, and 
identified the Good with the One, the source of the 
duality of the Infinite and the Measured with the 
resultant scale of realities from the One down to the 
objects of the material world. They emphasized the 
fundamental distinction between the Soul and the Body."
-wiki, neopythagoreanism