Philemon and the Liber Novus

Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident.The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

As Socrates travel through the citizenry of the time the question of what was to issue forth from, was always held in the bated breath of Socrates, that he would hear the wisdom of the Over-soul?

How many "degrees of freedom" to see that the chance always exists that what will come forth, is the illumination of something that resides within one's own self and completely accessible.

 The upcoming publication of Carl Jung's Red Book — a record of his fantasies and hallucinations during a sort of breakdown — has excited Jungians the world over. But is Jung still relevant today?

According to a New York Times Magazine article by Sara Corbett, the psychoanalyst Jung "got lost in the soup of his own psyche" when he was 38. He said he was "menaced by a psychosis" and that visions were coming at him in an "incessant stream." "In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,'" he wrote, "I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them." His method of "plummeting" was to write these fantasies down in what is now called his Red Book, a volume full of cramped text and intricate paintings that his family has guarded closely until recently. Now it has been translated into English, and will be published in October. See: Does Carl Jung Matter

Some might find some faint relevance to Robert Pirsig's journey,  to find that such compulsion to materialize in figurative speech, something that arose within Pirsig himself, also arose in Carl Jung?


This is a photograph of author and philosopher Robert M. Pirsigtaken by Ian Glendinning on the eve of the Liverpool conference of 7th July 2005.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1 Chapter 1.(Bold added by me for emphasis)

While being presented Pirsig's book for reading,  and the subsequent work that arose from that time,  also pointed toward something  real and potential within any of us in my mind, that we might considered in one context as delusional, could be an aspect of our own self as we learn to see this aspect as the higher self "manifest within our own dreams,"  to know what can exist "both delusively and real, subjectively as an imagery of creative recognition is an access to that collective unconscious. The key here is a fishing line, hook and sinker to know that the fisherman has really got "an idea on his mind" as he castes his line.

If one is to understand the "wisdom of illumination," under this context,  then it will ring more true to those who have familiarity in seeking to understand the makeup of the person we are. Some might even recognize an aspect cognitively arising in familiarity with what they observe in the real world.  For them to know that subjectively the imagination is strong and very capable in merging with the areas of  continued research in discoveries in science at the microscopic level.

It seems that anomaly by it's discovery takes keen observation and not just luck. It's a kind of observation that connects many things and not having taken the time to look, will have past the time of as an aspect of probability, and life circumstance, that really holds no meaning? It was just a "moment in time," gone unnoticed until someone close to the path of realization came  along and discovered it for them self.

That's the realization,  that in this opportunity as always existing, it was just waiting for you.

The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus (The New Book), is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, which was not published or shown to the public until 2009. Until 2001, his heirs denied scholars access to the book, which he began after a falling-out with Sigmund Freud in 1913. The book is written in calligraphic text and contains many illuminations.

I was excited when I heard news of this book.

As some will know I am a fan of Carl Jung because of what he represented to me in terms of self discovery and understanding of what one finds when one takes  a look at what they are capable of finding inside. You will pass this off very quickly as a subjective adventure, and relevant only to what can pass off as some supernatural event within the context of science's requirements.

But what I want people to know, regardless of their background in science, that such a pursuant to understand the greater complexity of what they can find inside does not relegate them to quackery and crack pottery. It's basically learning something about them self now having taken time.

The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."^[3]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight, and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did not appear to come from Jung's own experience, and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious.

Understanding our Angels and Daemons

So, every "story line" is about a Journey? IN Angel and Demons, we follow the story of Professor Robert Langdon.

The Vatican summons Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN to help them solve the Illuminati's threat, save the four preferiti, and find the hidden bomb. Langdon listens to the Illuminati message and deduces that the four cardinals will die at the four altars of the Path of Illumination. See: Angels and Demons

So in relation, I pointed out that Dan's Brown's book which I read, and the  film I have yet to see has it's differences, while we see the transfer from one medium to the next.   Same storyline. Pirsig's touch with the recognition of the Chautauquas, "the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer."

Anyway, I presented the Dialogues of Plato and the Plays of William Shakespeare as forums in which characters real or imagined, help to move forward the reader under "ideological progressions," as if,  dealing with this inductive/ deductive realization of information and probable outcomes once given the scenarios which are displayed for the mind to entertain.

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned Robert Pirsig and it is here as well I mention, "The Beautiful Mind." Both situations here are recognition of the Demons both indivudals(John Forbes Nash) under go,  as their story written is told in a life lesson and in John Nashes case, a film. Must we recognize that genius courts closely the aberrations of a sane and inquisitive mind, who looses touch with reality. Not so different then, when one who holds to this "other agenda of the Illuminati" in the Angel here Demons story here?

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Pirsig spent time in and out of mental hospitals from 1961 – 1963. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression, and was treated with shock therapy. Pirsig had made a progressive recovery and had discontinued psychotherapy in 1964. He later began working as a freelance writer. See: Robert Pirsig

So who was Robert Pirsig's Demon(Daemon)?

The words daemon, dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimôn),^[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans See:Daemon (mythology)

If one has the chance to read Robert Pirsig's book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , one should most certainly do so. I had seen this book lying around over the years and never really gave it much notice until a gentlemen spoke to me about the issue of "Quality and the Good."

Being a reader of Plato and seeing this influence in science today, I was after something quite substantial as I look to see how ideas could enter the mind, and that in general, not to conceive of it as an portend of evil( that Daemon), but as an acquisition of the inquiring mind of the student to reveal "a higher wisdom" resides in each of us.

This was part of setting the stage if you might, to recognizing this "dual nature,"  as an inductive/deductive relation we use in our relationship with the world. So in this sense,  a scientific position and responsibility of becoming an open person to receive information,  as you delve ever deeper into the nature of things. I am not saying this is the way it is, just that it is a "point of view" I was able to gather, once one does their  own homework. Pays attention to the politics. What is "self evident?"

So indeed Noise presents a "climatic realization of assumption after assumption." In the real world,  we are only armed with what we are expose too? Is this not the way it seems? Why such medium exposure might be thought of,  as to the "way the world is according too," which point of view. You have to be given the power back for discernment of what it means to you and ever the role of a scientific mind as to inquiry, for being responsible.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,—that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man’s own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers.

Plato, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 [387 AD] PHAEDRUS.

It is important to know then that Robert Pirsig's Angel or Daemon, was Phaedrus( depends on how you look at it in terms of what was given to Pirsig). As real or imagined the story line in the Journey across America with his son, was the realization of the lost years in an identity that went on a excursion, and never came home until the breakdown. John Nash had his own characters in the film, discovered later on, were the imaginings of a mind,  lost in the battle of what is real with paranoid schizophrenia. For John Nash it was always then later on in dealing with reality the struggle of who John Nash was while facing these imaginary people.

So while I say "real or imagined" one understands fully here that while we had identified the use of characters under the notion of "creative writing of Plato or of Bacon's Shakespeare,"  it was apparent that in the cases that I have sighted of Robert Pirsig and John Nash, that while sick mentally,  genius and brilliance were courted.

While I would point to John Nashes mathematical astuteness while sick, I am more wanting to point out the "Quality and the Good" of Pirsig as I continue. This is an understanding of that finer attribute of theoretical thinking that we ventured too. To see if reality by experimentation thusly engendered, then qualifies. How indeed did progression be marked if it did not allow one to see anew, with a new perspective and experiments are validated. In sociological thinking of our everyday,  how did our assumptions prove we were thinking theoretically, while assessing the politico defalcates of position and inherent of a party? What is the basis of this discernment then we can discriminate the truth of applied rights of constitutions written for democracies were written for freedoms and rights?

Evolutionary Game Theory

This of course was first introduced to me by the show called a Beautiful Mind. It is about the story of John Nash

It is true such mathematics could seem cold and austere. Realizing the complexity of emotive and intellectual pursuances, on how such a gathering can be conducive to propelling society forward with the idealizations developed by looking within self.

Something inherent, "as a pattern" within our nature?

So self discovery and journaling become a useful tool, when all of life's events can be "different from day today."

Emotive reactive mental changes, arising from some inherent understanding as a constituent of that group? Intellectual mathematical embracing to new societal futures? Knowledge. To become aware.I thought it better to remove from the comment lineup at Bee's.

Backreaction: Openness in Science posting is linked here to show dynamical behaviour that has a basis with which to consider. The fundamental constituent of each individual by contribution can change the whole dynamics of society "by adding value" from the context of self, it's idealizations, which can become an operative function of that society as a whole.

It was a "early recognition" for me as my pursuance to understand "mathematical relations" which can be drawn at the basis of society, our being, and it's commutative organizational faculties. These of course helped me to recognize that not only psychological models can be drawn, but that these dynamics could have been expanded upon by such diagrams, to illustrate, the patterns inherent in our natures and conduct toward other people.

Now without understanding the evolution of the philosophy which I had developed along side of my everyday thinking, what use to mention emotive or abstraction nature of the mind if it cannot find it's relations to the physiological functions of the human body and brain?

Game Theory

Game theory is the study of the ways in which strategic interactions among rational players produce outcomes with respect to the preferences (or utilities) of those players, none of which might have been intended by any of them. The meaning of this statement will not be clear to the non-expert until each of the italicized words and phrases has been explained and featured in some examples. Doing this will be the main business of this article. First, however, we provide some historical and philosophical context in order to motivate the reader for all of this technical work ahead......

6. Evolutionary Game Theory

has recently felt justified in stating baldly that "game theory is a universal language for the unification of the behavioral sciences." This may seem an extraordinary thing to say, but it is entirely plausible. Binmore (1998, 2005a) has modeled social history as a series of convergences on increasingly efficient equilibria in commonly encountered transaction games, interrupted by episodes in which some people try to shift to new equilibria by moving off stable equilibrium paths, resulting in periodic catastrophes. (Stalin, for example, tried to shift his society to a set of equilibria in which people cared more about the future industrial, military and political power of their state than they cared about their own lives. He was not successful; however, his efforts certainly created a situation in which, for a few decades, many Soviet people attached far less importance to other people's lives than usual.) Furthermore, applications of game theory to behavioral topics extend well beyond the political arena.

While I have always pushed to indicate the very idea that "mathematical organization" exists at the very fundamental levels of our being, this would not mean much to person in society who goes about their lives living the mundane. Without considerations of a larger context at play in society while ever recognizing the diversity that such probabilities such actions can take when groups of individuals gather together in this communicative relationship of chance and change.


This Nobel Prize award was of interest to me.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007


"for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory"

Leonid Hurwicz

Eric S.Maskin

Roger B. Myerson

I first started to come to the conclusion in regards to the "social construct" and the relationship it had to the mathematical environmental when I saw the movie, "The Beautiful Mind." It was based on the story of John Nash.

A Theory is Born

This science is unusual in the breadth of its potential applications. Unlike physics or chemistry, which have a clearly defined and narrow scope, the precepts of game theory are useful in a whole range of activities, from everyday social interactions and sports to business and economics, politics, law, diplomacy and war. Biologists have recognized that the Darwinian struggle for survival involves strategic interactions, and modern evolutionary theory has close links with game theory.

Game theory got its start with the work of John von Neumann in the 1920s, which culminated in his book with Oskar Morgenstern. They studied "zero-sum" games where the interests of two players were strictly opposed. John Nash treated the more general and realistic case of a mixture of common interests and rivalry and any number of players. Other theorists, most notably Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi who shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize with Nash, studied even more complex games with sequences of moves, and games where one player has more information than others.

It is important to keep present the work in science that is ongoing so one sees the consistency with which this process has been unfolding and is part of what awareness does not take in with our everyday life.

How a simple mathematic formula is starting to explain the bizarre prevalence of altruism in society Why do humans cooperate in things as diverse as environment conservation or the creation of fairer societies, even when they don’t receive anything in exchange or, worst, they might even be penalized?


See:

Inside the Mathematical Universe

Inside the Mathematical Universe

This Nobel Prize award was of interest to me.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007


"for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory"

Leonid Hurwicz

Eric S.Maskin

Roger B. Myerson

I first started to come to the conclusion in regards to the "social construct" and the relationship it had to the mathematical environmental when I saw the movie, "The Beautiful Mind." It was based on the story of John Nash.

A Theory is Born

This science is unusual in the breadth of its potential applications. Unlike physics or chemistry, which have a clearly defined and narrow scope, the precepts of game theory are useful in a whole range of activities, from everyday social interactions and sports to business and economics, politics, law, diplomacy and war. Biologists have recognized that the Darwinian struggle for survival involves strategic interactions, and modern evolutionary theory has close links with game theory.

Game theory got its start with the work of John von Neumann in the 1920s, which culminated in his book with Oskar Morgenstern. They studied "zero-sum" games where the interests of two players were strictly opposed. John Nash treated the more general and realistic case of a mixture of common interests and rivalry and any number of players. Other theorists, most notably Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi who shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize with Nash, studied even more complex games with sequences of moves, and games where one player has more information than others.

It was then that I realized that a "mathematical mind," although one which had it's fair share of problems, as in John Nash's case, was one deeply entrenched in finding "the pattern." The pattern is a interesting conclusion "about reality." It is about the math that lies at it's basis.

It was at this point being involved in Province wide negotiation, that I thought of trying to implement some of "this strategy" albeit unbeknownst to others, by bringing in factors that would change and alter the current negotiation practises.

I was not sure I understood the full implication of game theory or it's structure, but it was important enough to see if it's applicability could influence the current negotiation process. This was trying to implement the mathematics lying at the basis of reality and bringing new directions to a current process currently at the hands of two opposing bodies.

It is not important how I went about this, just that such applicability is brought back into the social sphere for demonstrative purposes.

See: The Information Triangle

Backreaction: The Information Triangle

What's on the Condense Matter Theorist's Mind?

The Theory of Everything


Prof. Robert B. Laughlin

The crystalline state is the simplest known example of a quantum , a stable state of matter whose generic low-energy properties are determined by a higher organizing principle and nothing else. Robert Laughlin

Thre are certain perspective that are different then what reductionism has done to serves it's purpose? Now such ideas lanquish because they seem unfitting. So you gain perspective by those who think about things differently and see what parameters rule the logic of their ideas.

In his book The End of Science John Horgan argues that our civilization is now facing barriers to the acquisition of knowledge so fundamental that the Golden Age of Science must must be thought of as over [38]. It is an instructive and humbling experience to attempt explaining this idea to a child. The outcome is always the same. The child eventually stops listening, smiles politely, and then runs off to explore the countless infinities of new things in his or her world. Horgan's book might more properly have been called the End of Reductionism, for it is actually a call to those of us concerned with the health of physical science to face the truth that in most respects the reductionist ideal has reached its limits as a guiding principle. Rather than a Theory of Everything we appear to face a hierarchy of Theories of Things, each emerging from its parent and evolving into its children as the energy scale is lowered. The end of reductionism is, however, not the end of science, or even the end of theoretical physics. How do proteins work their wonders? Why do magnetic insulators superconduct? Why is 3He a superfluid? Why is the electron mass in some metals stupendously large? Why do turbulent fluids display patterns? Why does black hole formation so resemble a quantum phase transition? Why do galaxies emit such enormous jets? The list is endless, and it does not include the most important questions of all, namely those raised by discoveries yet to come. The central task of theoretical physics in our time is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather but to catalogue and understand emergent behavior in its many guises, including potentially life itself. We call this physics of the next century the study of complex adaptive matter. For better or worse we are now witnessing a transition from the science of the past, so intimately linked to reductionism, to the study of complex adaptive matter, firmly based in experiment, with its hope for providing a jumping-off point for new discoveries, new concepts, and new wisdom.

So for me as I look at the state of the world I am asking what patterns were pre-esstablished that would govern the higg's mechanison and looking for such a "organizational attribute" would have settled the question as to why people gathered around the professor as Einstein crossed the room.

From a reductionsitic standpoint what was the "energy" doing as we used these colliders as mechanisims towards matter/mass comstituents discovery. Did this disavow our views on what was emergent from a point in spacetime?

So of course I will draw people's attention to what I think has to come into "expression" and how this is done. What is the "basis" of that expression and how we will see it explode into the sociological valuation that constitutes our society of exchanges.

I referred to John Nash here many times. What is it, he discovered at the heart of "negotiated processes?" What is the schematics of that expression that he identified in human behavior, as showing such schemas? Birds, that had some "higher organization pattern" that governed flock movement?

So are strings a emergent phenomena? You had to know their place in the scheme of things. Do your recognized the method as to the nergy valuation given? How such branching is effected, based on some "Feynman toy model discription" that revealed what about the early universe?

Edward Witten:

One thing I can tell you, though, is that most string theorist's suspect that spacetime is a emergent Phenomena in the language of condensed matter physics

What about pushing "perspective back" to the microseconds? At what point does the Universe make itself known? Had you already forgotten about the "first three microseconds?"

Foundations of Mathematic

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beautya beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

--BERTRAND RUSSELL, Study of Mathematics

In a Question below, is it worth it, to look at the context of what groups who gather might spark to the rest of society(click on it)? Look at what it has done for myself, and the reasons why such inductive/deductive features seem to be a part of the origins of cognitive functions that mathematically display itself?

Is there a theme in this regard through my blog that I had questioned earlier and links brought forth to raise awareness of what might have been implied in that true "consciousness sense" about the very nature of our involvement in the nature of reality?

But then too, awareness, about the death of such sensations. This is most troubling to me, if such model consumptions had made this impression then what had happened to the views as they exploded into the other realms? Other Realms? Why would I introduce Thales as a culminative vision about what could emerge and the father of geometry? Models make our view culmnative and increase the vision capabilites. Is there no one here that see differently after they had crossed a page to find that in our new tomorrows we see reality a little different now?

You have been touched at a most deep level, that goes beyond the death of such sensations as Toposense, or momentums of curvatures. A microscopic eye now, to the quantum nature, right next to your reading from this screen. It's in the air all around you, this potential? :)

Plato:

Mathematics(logic?) and experiment?

I respond in that thread, and although it would seems disjointed from the rest of the commentaries, I thought I was talking directly to Sean's opening post. So I have linked the post on the very title as I have done with previous entires, as they have been setting the pace for my thinking about what views they share and what safety net is placed out there for us lay readers.

Would this impede my question as to the relation of philosphy in Sean's opening statement, to find that it had found a trail that leads to reasons why funding and perspective on it, should be thought about most carefully. Held in the esteem, with which one's adventures in physics and mathematics might have benefited society?

I understand this need for determination, and as well, the need to reaffirm what philosophy might hold in regards to truly active memebers of the science community and the projects they are engaged in. Would they have a distain for the philosophy of mathematics?

I left a question mark out there, and this question although never answered did see some slight comment in relation to the philosophy that where such logic might have gained in relation, being mentioned. I'll have to explain this some more so you understand that I am working hard to make sense of what is out there and viewed, whether in the tabloids, or what ever generalizations made by mathematicians, or the physicist who looks that little bit further.

Shall I quickly respond to the thread commetary or should I continue? I thnk it important that I respond to the comments rasied but I'll do this after by highlighting the area that spoke to me in relation to this train of thought.

I linked a quote from Plato on the idea of philosophy in my comment. I wil be moving from that position.

Philosophy of Mathematics

Foundations Study Guide: Philosophy of Mathematics by David S. Ross, Ph.D.
The philosophy of mathematics is the philosophical study of the concepts and methods of mathematics. It is concerned with the nature of numbers, geometric objects, and other mathematical concepts; it is concerned with their cognitive origins and with their application to reality. It addresses the validation of methods of mathematical inference. In particular, it deals with the logical problems associated with mathematical infinitude.

Among the sciences, mathematics has a unique relation to philosophy. Since antiquity, philosophers have envied it as the model of logical perfection, because of the clarity of its concepts and the certainty of its conclusions, and have therefore devoted much effort to explaining the nature of mathematics.

You have to understand that although I am deficient in the math skills many have, it is not without effort that I am enaging myself in what appears to be beautiful and simplistic design when completed as a model. When we look at what the Wunderkammern had to offer in a revitalizing and dusting off of, models that were concretized for us. Did they lanquish until they were refurbished to the museums of time, so that we may again look at what mathematics has accomplished for us. In ways, that are very abstract and beautiful? What then exist as you gazed into the magnetic field, the dynamcis of brane held issues and the exemplification of design in those branes? It had to follow consistent and progressive developement in the physics of.



The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Eugene Wigner

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess. However, this is not our present subject. The principal point which will have to be recalled later is that the mathematician could formulate only a handful of interesting theorems without defining concepts beyond those contained in the axioms and that the concepts outside those contained in the axioms are defined with a view of permitting ingenious logical operations which appeal to our aesthetic sense both as operations and also in their results of great generality and simplicity.

[3 M. Polanyi, in his Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1958), says: "All these difficulties are but consequences of our
refusal to see that mathematics cannot be defined without acknowledging
its most obvious feature: namely, that it is interesting" (p 188).]

Social constructivism or social realism

Now here is the part, that while I saw the devloping nature of the tread of thinking and comments how would I answer and stay in tune? I previously spoke of John Nash and the inherent nature of mathematics as it could pierce the bargaining process, that to have this moved t a dynamcial social and constructive pallette developed in the ongoing relations of nations, why would such a scoial construct not be recognized as to the direction and strength of what mathematics might mean from a cognitive and developing brain that we have.

This theory sees mathematics primarily as a social construct, as a product of culture, subject to correction and change. Like the other sciences, mathematics is viewed as an empirical endeavor whose results are constantly compared to 'reality' and may be discarded if they don't agree with observation or prove pointless. The direction of mathematical research is dictated by the fashions of the social group performing it or by the needs of the society financing it. However, although such external forces may change the direction of some mathematical research, there are strong internal constraints (the mathematical traditions, methods, problems, meanings and values into which mathematicians are enculturated) that work to conserve the historically defined discipline.

This runs counter to the traditional beliefs of working mathematicians, that mathematics is somehow pure or objective. But social constructivists argue that mathematics is in fact grounded by much uncertainty: as mathematical practice evolves, the status of previous mathematics is cast into doubt, and is corrected to the degree it is required or desired by the current Mathematical Community. This can be seen in the development of analysis from reexamination of the calculus of Leibniz and Newton. They argue further that finished mathematics is often accorded too much status, and folk mathematics not enough, due to an over-belief in axiomatic proof and peer review as practices.

This gets very comlicated for me. Yet I recognize the inhernet pattern at the basis of these negotiatons and the games involved. More to follow, and short on time.