numbers vs. words

@Fido,

Fido;117858 wrote:

Res from Latin, our source of the word reality means thing...Something of substance is a thing, but seeing something completely new, we cannot classify it, but the second time we see it we can recognize it, and begin to classify it... Concepts are abstractions, the facts of the matter at hand, by which we recognize our reality and begin to recreate it in a form more to our liking...

True that! If not for the Logos, we'd be chimps! You also touch on the Hegelian notion of the future as a concept that penetrates the spatial present by means of "us truly," or humanity. It's only humanity that can synthesize new concepts. It's our abstractions that give us the edge.

I only differ with you on this when you say that abstractions are the facts of the matter at hand, but abstraction can climb beyond facts. Facts follow abstractions sometimes -- if only the abstractions of our best thinkers, who extend our consciousness including our self-consciousness as the being who uses language in order to not repeat the past. Animals are quasi-eternal, although they move in time. Like Schopenhauer saw. An animal species is an Aristotlean eternity in drag, dressed up in a thin layer of temporality that man the biologist can quantify or digitalize or equate. But man ain't like it. His story is never finished. There is nothing new under the sun except for the man of tomorrow, who lives in the spatial present as a concept/synthesis/abstraction. What think ye?

@Reconstructo,

"Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile"

from the movie Pi

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;134320 wrote:

"Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile"

from the movie Pi

Great movie!! The number pi is the collision point! Euclidean Space is continuous, which is the opposite of number. Ergo: irrational numbers....

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;134320 wrote:

"Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile"

from the movie Pi

It is not a language exactly, but the way one can best talk of nature, actually matter...But we are a long way from being able to talk about the essential person with math...Most of our forms/concepts are moral, which is to say spiritual, having no being, and only meaning... Try once to apply math as logic is to moral forms and you will be cured... There is no logic to that world as to the physical...It is only a question of what means, and what works, and why...

@Fido,

Fido;134337 wrote:

It is not a language exactly, but the way one can best talk of nature, actually matter...But we are a long way from being able to talk about the essential person with math...Most of our forms/concepts are moral, which is to say spiritual, having no being, and only meaning... Try once to apply math as logic is to moral forms and you will be cured... There is no logic to that world as to the physical...It is only a question of what means, and what works, and why...

To the degree that humans are humans and not just animals, math will never describe humanity.

@Reconstructo,

Agreed. Math can describe patterns in the physical realm but our feelings can only be experienced first hand and are indescribable by any language. Even our spoken words can only do so much; the essence of our experience is beyond translation.

@Mentally Ill,

Mentally Ill;134638 wrote:

Agreed. Math can describe patterns in the physical realm but our feelings can only be experienced first hand and are indescribable by any language. Even our spoken words can only do so much; the essence of our experience is beyond translation.

I would like to correct just one little thing... The word essence refers to the rational and the conceptual.. So essence is what we can know..The source of being remains mysterious, however.....

---------- Post added 03-02-2010 at 04:09 PM ----------

Fido;134337 wrote:

It is not a language exactly, but the way one can best talk of nature, actually matter...

Number is actually just the word being...think of it. A number is a word whose only meaning is pure unity, pure white-washed concept... And we manipulate this white-washed word with positional notation and 10 digits...but those ten digits are deceitful...

Ten is still a unity. Ten is just a one that can be zoomed in on for no-longer-ten separate ones..Wittgenstein was close to this....

Quote:

6.022 The concept of number is simply what is common to all numbers, the
general form of a number. The concept of number is the variable number.
And the concept of numerical equality is the general form of all
particular cases of numerical equality.

@cws910,

Number is pure concept, but as such is pure lie...It is all based upon one, and one as one, and one as the equal of one... Where have you ever seen one dog the equal of another, or individual people as equal...Yet we count as one any number of things unequal in fact, and base all our math on that...It is a wonder anything comes out right...They must be averaging some where...Or else units are one in gross...

@Fido,

Fido;135117 wrote:

Number is pure concept, but as such is pure lie...It is all based upon one, and one as one, and one as the equal of one... Where have you ever seen one dog the equal of another, or individual people as equal...Yet we count as one any number of things unequal in fact, and base all our math on that...It is a wonder anything comes out right...They must be averaging some where...Or else units are one in gross...

I agree. And Wittgenstein also saw this. We are forced to use words, which lack the precision of numbers but can at least imperfectly refer to things. Except as you & Wittgenstein agree: ethical concepts are not precise, or like you say, infinities. (And this what that infinity sign stands for in my triangle). Human experiences is the clash of sense-data, feeling, our words, and our numbers. From this and nothing else we construct our culture in space which is also continuous, just as our words are blurry, especially our most important words....

And this is why those cathedrals meant something, and all those paintings, even the invention of calculus. Western Man is the man of Infinite Space, unlike the Greek, according to Spengler. There was an esoteric meaning even in the Catholics, despite the corruption here and there. Only a few can think critically. The average man, as I am sure you have observed, just doesn't care....He must be taught his cultures values thru the senses and the symbol...
But culture falls into civilization, and I'm not sure that it can go backward.

Quote:

4.112 Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical
work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result
in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of
propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy
and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp
boundaries.

@cws910,

Recon... I can agree with most except to say that knowledge is culture... To have ones culture is to have that knowledge, the aquired knowledge of ones people...

@cws910,

A number is neither a word nor a concept.

@fast,

fast;135330 wrote:

A number is neither a word nor a concept.

What about Goedel numbers? PIN numbers? etc?

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;135332 wrote:

What about Goedel numbers? PIN numbers? etc?

I'm not familiar with Goedel numbers, but what about them? A PIN (or personal identification number) is a number, but it's not a word, nor is it a concept.

@fast,

fast;135340 wrote:

I'm not familiar with Goedel numbers, but what about them?

fast;135340 wrote:

A PIN (or personal identification number) is a number, but it's not a word, nor is it a concept.

A PIN number is as much a word as any other password is.

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;135344 wrote:

A PIN number is as much a word as any other password is.

The word, "number" is often confused with the word, "numeral." Not only that, numbers are also confused with numerals.

A numeral is much like a word. The word, "five" refers (for it is a referring term), and it refers to the number five. The numeral, "5" (just like the word, "five") also refers, and it refers to the same thing the word, "five" refers to, the number five (or number 5).

There are symbols that denote (or stand in place for) meaning, and the common symbols we are all to familiar with are words, but words are not the only symbols. Numerals are also symbols.

@fast,

fast;135330 wrote:

A number is neither a word nor a concept.

You are wrong... Most numbers are signs, but one number, one, to be exact is a concept, and all other numbers are in relation to that one number...

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 12:34 PM ----------

fast;135350 wrote:

The word, "number" is often confused with the word, "numeral." Not only that, numbers are also confused with numerals.

A numeral is much like a word. The word, "five" refers (for it is a referring term), and it refers to the number five. The numeral, "5" (just like the word, "five") also refers, and it refers to the same thing the word, "five" refers to, the number five (or number 5).

There are symbols that denote (or stand in place for) meaning, and the common symbols we are all to familiar with are words, but words are not the only symbols. Numerals are also symbols.

All words are concepts...

@cws910,

Fido,

and what of the words and, or, but, if, then, etc. ?

The word 'and' is quite similar to the symbol for addition, +.

It seems this whole thread begins wrongheaded.

@cws910,

It seems to me that negation is something that is not in itself a concept.....It's a hole that needs a donut in which to manifest itself. And addition is perhaps the same as negation, beneath their surface differences....

The concept of being and the non-concept of negation (which can only be spoken of as a concept...)

@fast,

fast;135330 wrote:

A number is neither a word nor a concept.

Of course. Some words are numerals, like the word, "two". But numbers cannot be words. Just as cats cannot be words, although, of course, the word "cat" is a word (but not a cat). The same confusion between words and things. It is just amazing that people cannot distinguish between words and things.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;135551 wrote:

Of course. Some words are numerals, like the word, "two". But numbers cannot be words. Just as cats cannot be words, although, of course, the word "cat" is a word (but not a cat). The same confusion between words and things. It is just amazing that people cannot distinguish between words and things.

No man. the issue is that a thing is unified conceptually. else it would not be a particular body of qualia in a causal nexus. thingness is conceptual. it's not that the raw material is made of thought but that we experience the raw material as a unity.

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numbers vs. words

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