Seldon on:
Mathematico-
Scientific
Perfectionism.
GLOBAL STRATEGIC
HYPOTHESES.
Dear Reader,
The text below contains a
salutary caution from our co-founder, Karl Seldon.
Seldon –
“The goal of discovering a mathematical formalism, and an accompanying verbally-formulated theory, that perfectly matches empirical measurements of physical reality, is, and always has been, a quixotic, delusory pursuit, especially in the “[human-]social” sciences, but also even in the, much more vaunted, “natural” sciences.”
“Physical actuality always
seems to assault such self-deluded perfection-seeking “scientists” with
exceptions, anomalies, cases which slip through the fisted fingers of human
mental handiwork, always at least partly escaping the grasp of our concepts.”
“Such has been the case so
far.”
“At the very least, it is way
too early for us, now, or perhaps even ever, to expect theoretico-mathematical “perfection”,
we whose physics has deeply studied only ~5% of the, just so very recently discerned, total
mass/energy content of our cosmos; the ‘Bright Matter’ part, with the ~25% “Dark
Matter” part, and with the even more predominant “Dark Energy” part, at ~70%,
still deeply unexpected, very-little-explored, and even
less understood.”
“Of course, the Platon-oid
mathematical mystics have an easy out when confronted with the pervasive
imperfections rife in modern, mathematico-science. They can claim that their mathematical forms,
truly located only in an immaterial, immutable, eternal and transcendental
realm of pure «ideaV», ARE “perfect”. That it is just the coarse, dirty, degenerate
physical, material world that is at fault; that is just a crude, rough-edged,
faulty copy of that perfect realm, hence cannot perfectly fit those “pure”
forms.”
“However, for those of us who
do not buy that math-mysticism, it is apparent that our models can only be
imperfect renderings of reality, estimates containing errors, both quantitative and
qualitative/ontological errors; models inescapably inexact and defectious, albeit also susceptible of continuing improvement.
“Homeomorphic defect is here
to stay.”
For more
information regarding these
Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free
of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:
and
https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon
For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books
published by
the F.E.D. Press, see –
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH
¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel Detonacciones,
Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];
Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;
Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;
Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.
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