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| Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein |
Two principal views of the nature of mathematics are prevalent among mathematicians—Platonism and formalism. Platonism is dominant, but it’s hard to talk about it in public. Formalism feels more respectable philosophically, but it’s almost impossible for a working mathematician to really believe it.
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The formalist philosophy of mathematics is often condensed to a short slogan: “Mathematics is a meaningless game.” (“Meaningless” and “game” remain undefined. Wittgenstein showed that games have no strict definition, only a family resemblance.)
What do formalists mean by “game” when they call mathematics a game? Perhaps they use “game” to mean something “played by the rules.” (Now “play” and “rule” are undefined!)
For a game in that sense, two things are needed:
(2) people to play by the rules.
(1) rules.
Rule-making can be deliberate, as in Monopoly or Scrabble—or spontaneous, as in natural languages or elementary arithmetic.
In either case, the making of rules doesn’t follow rules!
Wittgenstein and some others seem to think that since the making of rules doesn’t follow rules, then the rules are arbitrary. They could just as well be any way at all. This is a gross error.
The rules of language and of mathematics are historically determined by the workings of society that evolve under pressure of the inner workings and interactions of social groups, and the physical and biological environment of earth.
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In real life there are no totally rule-governed activities. Only more or less rule-governed ones, with more or less definite procedures for disputes. The rules and procedures evolve, sometimes formally like amending the U.S. Constitution, sometimes informally, as street games evolve with time and mixing of cultures. Is there totally unruly or ruleless behavior? Perhaps not. Mathematics is in part a rule-governed game. But one can’t overlook how the rules are made, how they evolve, and how disputes are resolved. That isn’t rule governed, and can’t be.
Computer proof is changing the way the game of mathematics is played. Wolfgang Haken thinks computer proof is permitted under the rules. Paul Halmos thinks it ought to be against the rules. Tom Tymoczko thinks it amounts to changing the rules. In the long run, what mathematicians publish, cite, and especially teach, will decide the rules. We have no French Academy to set rules, no cabal of team owners to say how to play our game. Our rules are set by our consensus, influenced and led by our most powerful or prestigious members (of course).
These considerations on games and rules in general show that one can’t understand mathematics (or any other nontrivial human activity) by simply finding rules that it follows or ought to follow. Even if that could be done, it would lead to more interesting questions: Why and whence those rules?
The notion of strictly following rules without any need for judgment is a fiction. It has its use and interest. It’s misleading to apply it literally to real life.
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Platonism says mathematical objects are real and independent of our knowledge. Space-filling curves, uncountably infinite sets, infinite-dimensional manifolds—all the members of the mathematical zoo—are definite objects, with definite properties, known or unknown. These objects exist outside physical space and time. They were never created. They never change. By logic’s law of the excluded middle, a meaningful question about any of them has an answer, whether we know it or not. According to Platonism a mathematician is an empirical scientist, like a botanist. He can’t invent, because everything is already there. He can only discover.
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The objections to Platonism are never answered: the strange parallel existence of two realities—physical and mathematical; and the impossibility of contact between the flesh-and-blood mathematician and the immaterial mathematical object. Platonism shares the fatal flaw of Cartesian dualism. To explain the existence and properties of mind and matter, Descartes postulated a different “substance” for each. But he couldn’t plausibly explain how the two substances interact, as mind and body do interact. In similar fashion, Platonists explain mathematics by a separate universe of abstract objects, independent of the material universe. But how do the abstract and material universes interact? How do flesh-and-blood mathematicians acquire the knowledge of number?
To answer, you have to forget Platonism, and look in the socio-cultural past and present, in the history of mathematics, including the tragic life of Georg Cantor.
The set-theoretic universe constructed by Cantor and generally adopted by Platonists is believed to include all mathematics, past, present, and future. In it, the uncountable set of real numbers is just the beginning of uncountable chains of uncountables. The cardinality of this set universe is unspeakably greater than that of the material world. It dwarfs the material universe to a tiny speck. And it was all there before there was an earth, a moon, or a sun, even before the Big Bang. Yet this tremendous reality is unnoticed! Humanity dreams on, totally unaware of it—except for us mathematicians. We alone notice it. But only since Cantor revealed it in 1890. Is this plausible? Is this credible? Roger Penrose declares himself a Platonist, but draws the line at swallowing the whole set-theoretic hierarchy.
Platonists don’t acknowledge the arguments against Platonism. They just reavow Platonism.
Frege’s point of view persists today among set-theoretic Platonists. It goes something like this:
1. Surely the empty set exists—we all have encountered it!
2. Starting from the empty set, perform a few natural operations, like forming the set of all subsets. Before long you have a magnificent structure in which you can embed the real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions, Hilbert spaces, infinite-dimensional differentiable manifolds, and anything else you like.
3. Therefore it’s vain to talk of inventing or creating mathematics. In this all-encompassing, set-theoretic structure, everything we could ever want or dream of is already present.
Yet most advances in mainstream mathematics are made without reference to any set-theoretic embedding. Saying Hilbert space was already there in the set universe is like telling Rodin, “The Thinker is a nice piece of work, but all you did was get rid of the extra marble. The statue was there inside the marble quarry before you were born.” Rodin made The Thinker by removing marble. Hilbert, von Neumann, and the rest made the theory of Hilbert space by analysing, generalizing, and rearranging mathematical ideas that were present in the mathematical atmosphere of their time.
(Reuben Hersh, What is mathematics really?)
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“Mathematical objects are real. Their existence is an objective fact, independent of our knowledge of them. Infinite sets, uncountably infinite sets, infinite-dimensional manifolds, space-filling curves—all the denizens of the mathematical zoo—are definite objects, with definite properties. Some of their properties are known, some are unknown. These objects aren’t physical or material. They’re outside space and time. They’re immutable. They’re uncreated. A meaningful statement about one of these objects is true or false, whether we know it or not. Mathematicians are empirical scientists, like botanists. We can’t invent anything; it’s there already. We try to discover.”
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