Dear Keith,
You old Socratic devil! The point is well taken.
You are right about the layers of human meaning in mathematics and
knowledge. The interaction between Socrates and the slave-boy is a
good example.
In speaking of inhuman science, I suppose we might draw two (or more)
lines through the thread.
One line involves the issue of knowing as it is connected to and
developed through the knowing agent. Each of us finds our path to
Euclid, and this path is embedded (and embodied) in the self and life
of the knower. This journey proceeds only through the human agent.
In describing inhuman science, I referred to the object of inquiry.
In this sense, the deductive findings of Euclidean geometry must be
the same for all of us without regard to our own person. This does
not depend upon the human agent. It is this aspect of the science
that is inhuman - or trans-human - even though a human must know.
Do note, however, that I spoke of inhuman science, rather than
inhuman knowledge. Only a knowing agent - a human being or another
life form - may know. Outside the human, we have only information.
Once a human being externalizes his or her knowledge as a
representation, it is no longer knowledge but information. It becomes
knowledge again only when another human (or life form of some kind)
internalizes the information as a form of knowing.
Outside the human, there is no mathematical knowledge. There is only
mathematical information.
Except, of course, in the case of Monica Welinsky and Euclid's cigar.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Keith Russell wrote:
-snip-
I can agree with much of what you write - my one concern that might
be of interest to others is the simple account of maths as "inhuman".
The affect of the knower of mathematical knowledge is a most
particular one - just like the affect of the knower (experiencer of)
the Cartesian Cogito. This is why Aristotle supports maths and Sartre
supports the Cogito.
We also need to recall that the words "maths" simply means, in Greek,
"knowledge". Hence a "polymath" is a person who knows many things.
The Greek philosophers, at the time of the Academy, saw "true"
knowledge as that kind of knowledge found in what we now call "maths".
We can duplicate, as an experience, the event of the slave, in the
Meno, who discloses the knowledge of how to double a square. I
experienced such a moment in my youth when Euclidean geometry opened
up to me, as a disclosure that meant I was suddenly able to solve
problems in geometry without any instructions.
We can read Descarte as an experiment/experience and do what he asks
us to do. Then we can experince the moment of the Cogito. I did this
when I was a young adult. The affect was transforming.
-snip-
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management
Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University
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