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To: snarks_when_bored
The number of humanities people of Goldstein's quality is not as large as one would wish, that's for sure.

I think you misunderstood what I said. Goldstein is part of the problem, not the solution.

8 posted on 06/08/2005 8:05:08 PM PDT by stripes1776
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To: stripes1776

No, I don't think I misunderstood...I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. If you've read the article, you'll understand that Goldstein is well-versed in the matters of which she speaks.


9 posted on 06/08/2005 8:07:24 PM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: stripes1776
exactly. forgive me everyone for dumping on this gal, but is just another feeble attempt to rescue one of the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism, scientific socialism. how quaint.

the giveaway is her invoking Einstein (a religious icon to scientific socialists), in the first sentence, as in well, our philosophy is in line with Albert Einstein's, so if you don't agree with it you are stupid or ignorant

i think godel actually blew away mathematics as containing any 'self evident truth' unless we can agree that the 'truth' of mathematics is that a mathematician willed into existence a certain set of (clearly self referential) equations and relations to create a self consistent (equation) world, which gains its "status" by being able to predict physical phenomena. the dirty little secret of mathematics (& physics) is that as soon as you stray from *very* simple phenomena, things get very messy in a hurry. compare differential equations (very neat and tidy) with partial differential equations (more heuristic than formulaic) to get a sense of what i am talking about...

godel is to mathematics what heisenberg is to quantum mechanics, and in a way einstein is to newtonian mechanics, showing what the LIMITS to human analysis of our world, rather than postulating some absolute reality about it...

31 posted on 06/09/2005 6:58:03 AM PDT by chilepepper (The map is not the territory -- Alfred Korzybski)
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