Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 1, 4:43=A0pm, scottpsolo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> one of the most difficult and interesting areas of number theory today
> is the study of something called Euler systems (obviously it's way
> above my head).
>
> I have a buddy who is one of the world's greatest mathematicians, and
> he's just about done with a book on this subject.
>
> This buddy of mine has never studied dialectics! =A0Can you imagine
> that! =A0He spends his life traveling to advanced mathematical think
> tanks and institutes giving lectures, wins medals, but has never
> studied dialectics!
>
> How is it possible for him to contribute intellectually at this level
> without reading crap by dead soviet philosophers? =A0I just don't get
> it! =A0Could he possibly be an "unconcious dialectician"?

By never studying dialectics, do you mean he is philosophically
virgin? Any substantial study of philosophy involves topics that deal
with the same subject as dialectics. Their study of which was
influenced by the systems-theoretic framework that Hegel and Marx
pioneered. You don't get free of dialectics merely by avoiding
canonical texts. Yet there are no doubt mathematicians who think of
nothing philosophical. It becomes more an obstacle when the
mathematician thinks *about* the discipline than when he simply thinks
*in* the discipline. It isn't necessarily that mathematics isn't
dialectical--whatever that means--but that the ways of dealing with
"contradictions" become routinized when you reason within an
established framework, as opposed to reasoning about the framework.

srd