by Wys So
“The Greek language, and it alone, is logos.”
It is one of the statements in Heidegger’s “What is Philosophy?” that has caught my attention. After trying to relate the Greek language (or the Logos) to my life, I’ve found out that I have approached more Greek letters than I imagined. To my surprise, more than half of my life I have been dealing with those Greek letters such as α, β, µ, Ω, £, etc.
Few days ago when I was reviewing for my Advanced Calculus test about real number line, I surprisingly gained some insights about the relatedness of Mathematics and Philosophy. Theoretically, imagine a real number line from negative infinity to positive infinity, this real number line for me is the whole reality itself. From the real number line I choose a subset “S”, this subset can be imagined as a small circle located inside a very, very big circle named “R” which stands for reality. So each and everyone of us has our own “S”, which is our unique life, our daily routine, or the world that we are immersed in subconsciously.
Recalling David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” lead me to think of a concept in Advanced Calculus called the “boundary point”. David Foster Wallace called our attention to be “aware”, similarly, it’s like telling us to be on the “boundary” of our own “S”. Being on the boundary point and to be aware will help us in realizing that the world is not just about ‘my’s. We are actually living with other people, with many other more subsets on the real number line. In addition, it is also implied by David Foster Wallace that we should go to the “exterior” of our own subset, going “out” of ourselves.
Moreover, Advanced Calculus highly focused on the problems about “existence”. Most of the problems are all about proving. Some of the problems are: Prove that x is an interior point; prove that the limit does not exist; prove that S does not contain its limit point; prove that the union of open sets is open, etc. All of these problems are similar to philosophy in the sense that they are looking for a reason, for an existence, perhaps. In fact, philosophy is about reason, about existence.
And it’s probably why people say that great mathematicians are great philosophers.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with what Wai Yiu has said and I also want to add to it.
ReplyDeleteI think that being a boundary point of our own "S" can also be likened to us knowing what we know and what we don't know. As what Wai Yiu has mentioned, it is about being aware. If we take a "neighborhood" around us (remember, we are a boundary point), there are really certain things we know that we know precisely because they are part of our own "S." But at the same time, there are things that we know we don't know. These things are ones not part of our own "S" and they are exactly the ones we must strive to know. It is about going beyond ourselves.
Mathematics, therefore, is really very similar to philosophy. Solving a problem or proving a theorem requires a lot of time. Do it hastily, and you just might end up with more problems because of all the errors you've made. So, mathematicians take their time. There was even this mathematician, Andrew Wiles, who spent 6 years proving Fermat's Last Theorem. And as we all know, philosophers take their time, as well. They may even spend years coming back to the same topic, discussing it over and over again.
Marika King
PH 101 - A