Part 11: Seldon’s Message Series -- ‘Mathematics and Truth' [De-Mystifying Mathematics].

Part 11:  Seldon’s Message Series --

‘Mathematics and Truth.

Dear Readers,

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an officer of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] Office of Public Liaison, to share with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, key excerpts from the internal writings, and from the internal sayings, of our co-founder, Karl Seldon.

The eleventh such release in this new series is entered below [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

This instalment addresses the Seldonian view of the relation between “mathematical truth” and “this-sided” [Marx], concrete, sensuous, real, practical truth.

For more information regarding, and for [further] instantiations of, these Marxian and Seldonian insights, please see --

www.dialectics.info

For ‘poster-izations’ of many of these Marxian and Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH?ref=search_shop_redirect

ENJOY!

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.],

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison,

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

[De-Mystifying Mathematics].

“... Mathematical idealizations, mathematical “truths”, e.g., “truths” deductively derived from humans-chosen, humans-created axioms and postulates, are only, in any sense, “absolute” truths to the extent that they are ‘unreal truths’.”

“They are “this-sided” [Marx], concrete, sensuous, real, practical truths only to the extent that they are grasped as relative truths, including as truths only relative to axioms and postulates that always retain aspects that are arbitrary.”

“But grasped as such, as relative truths, mathematical truths can become vastly useful truths -- powerful mental tools, ‘«organon»-ic” instruments for practical thought -- that can be of great service in the engineering and in the management of human-sensuous actuality, and that can contribute to what Marx called “universal labor”...”