3 ideas
10190 | From the axiomatic point of view, mathematics is a storehouse of abstract structures [Bourbaki] |
Full Idea: From the axiomatic point of view, mathematics appears as a storehouse of abstract forms - the mathematical structures. | |
From: Nicholas Bourbaki (The Architecture of Mathematics [1950], 221-32), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Review of Chihara's 'Structural Acc of Maths' p.79 | |
A reaction: This seems to be the culmination of the structuralist view that developed from Dedekind and Hilbert, and was further developed by philosophers in the 1990s. |
1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
3914 | Language arranges sensory experience to form a world-order [Whorf] |
Full Idea: Language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order. | |
From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs [1936], p.55) | |
A reaction: This is only true to a limited degree. See Davidson's 'On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. All humans share a world-order, to some extent. |