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College News,axioms, theorems, junctures, principles—have some sort of existence. The concept “number, for example, is of rich practical and aesthetic value—our plans for guests must depend on the number of them; poets speak in mathematical terms:“She had three lilies in her hand,The stars in her hair were seven/’Musicians are wholly dependent on the number concept for musical structure. The churchman makes use of it in his conception of the Trinity.Secondly, what sorts of existence are there? Anything that exists is a fact. According to Aristotle, being is asserted of objects in a variety of senses. We may make at least three classes—occurrences, physical facts and possibilities. Of the first two, occurrences include historical events and the happenings of our everyday life, physical facts deal with existences in the scientific and material sense. The class of possibilities deals with the multiple existences of our imagination.We are tempted to make light of mere possibilities, and yet we must recognize that creations of the imagination have a being of their, own. if we hear that King Lear fought in the Trojan war, we say, “That is not a fact/' Again, an artist is a potential maker of works of art even when idle. An uneaten orange exists as food, although the eating of it is yet a mere possibility. A man a deep is in fact the same person as when awake—he has the same possibilities. AH the possibilities which belong to objects seem to be a part of their existence.ft is the privilege of mathematical science to bring us into contact with certain peculiarly significant possibilities. The sound way of winning mastery over the real world is to study the method of geometric thought Things worked out by the process of reasoning can be applied to the external world. Why is it. then, that the world of the senses conforms to the high structures worked out by reason? A view as to the nature of the real world is implied; mathematical entities will possess exactly the sort of being that the world itself possesses. The visible and tangible universe does, in some way, objectify mathematical forms. But the most characteristic feature of real mathematical truth is that it is untouched by the question as to whether sciences or physical questions deal with it, or not. Numbers are considered apart from their conned ion with the world. Their function is relational. Possibility is the question which has to do with the nature of mathematical existence.Pure mathematics is a science which first seems to draw necessary conclusions from postulates chosen and defined by the investigator.
Newspaper Details
Poughkeepsie Vassar Miscellany
Poughkeepsie, New York, US
Mon, Apr 01, 1907
Page 56
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USA 09 Mar 2024
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