The mathematization of philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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In my research into the connections between Philosophy
and science… the path of science has been one of, since
1500, of the increasing mathematical rending of science…
From the epicycles of the Ptolemaic system to the ever increasing
use of math to explain the solar system…the history of science in
the last 500 years has been this increasing mathematization of the
world… certain subjects resist this increased mathematization of
their respective fields… History and psychology are just two that
do so.. and despite efforts to make philosophy a science by
mathematics, for example, Whitehead and Russell’s ‘‘Principia
Mathematica’’ (which years later Russell deemed that effort
as a failure)

The question arises that if we can’t mathematized philosophy,
is philosophy actually worth the effort? but so much of what
we would call philosophy, does resist math…for example,
the existentialists made angst as one of the more powerful
philosophical notions… we know that angst is a tool
in the human experience… (even if we can’t always
identify it as such) How would I turn angst into a mathematical
tool? I can say perhaps, that 32% of native Americans suffer
from angst… but that statement tells us very little… because
the operative word angst, hasn’t been defined… what is angst?
and how would I turn that definition into a mathematical statement?
and BTW, for the curious, ANGST: A term which denotes
anxiety and emotional turmoil… someone who is feeling
angsty many feel or display worry, dread, apprehension,
restlessness or insecurity… whereas science measures,
weighs, times, compares, contrast, analyze, or as we might
know it, the scientific method…

Can we mathematized philosophy enough to make
some understanding of this term, angst, that is acceptable
to both philosophy and science? I don’t see how we can
mathematised the word, angst, sufficient enough to be covered
by both science and philosophy…

Let us try this, is that any means in which we can use science,
the act of mathematization, into finding out about love?
For I would argue that love is, perhaps, the dominant
mover of the world… in many respects, love is what drives
human beings, and thus the human world…
but there doesn’t seem any means to mathematized love…
and I for one, am glad for that…we can say that
love is unanalyzable, it cannot be treated by the scientific
method…for every single person on earth, everyone
engages with love differently, it is the relative thing we
can find… for we can feel/receive love strongly, softly, and we
give out love in vastly different ways… Today, I am in love
with my wife, but it has changed and adapted into a different
sort of love then was present the first 10 years we were married…
the very nature of how we love changes…and it comes and goes,
and changes its nature all the time… how would one
go about analyze and mathematizing love, when it is so
changeable and adaptable? In all the universe, love might
be the hardest thing in the universe to make sense out of…
and when this administration finally announces that there
are aliens from outer space, and I am guessing that it will
be this year, as Neil deGrasse Tyson has suggested,
I want to know, do aliens love as we love? and can it be mathematized
as science is? That is among the many millions of questions I
have for any aliens coming to earth… do you love?

and we may well discover that much of what we believe
to be universal, isn’t, that emotions we human feel, isn’t
a universal, but is a local phenomenon driven by earth’s
evolution… how are we to adapt to the notion that
much of what drives human beings are only aspects
of being human, and does not exist anywhere else?
does the loss of universal beliefs change us in transformative
ways? that science is a bit more than 500 years old, given
that human beings have been around for maybe 500,000 down
to 300,000 years, does that mean that science, as we know it,
is going to change and adapt into ways that we today, wouldn’t
even recognize it… I am not sure that science of today, will be
seen as such in a couple of hundred years…
there is a clear and distinct difference between science and
philosophy today, but will that change? I am guessing yes,
but I can’t tell you how or in what fashion that change will
turn into… can we believe that the use of science, the
increasing mathematization of the world will go on, or will
it change and become something else?

Will philosophy continue to be separate and apart from science?

Kropotkin

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I think philosophy and nomothetic science are two different things that can maybe benefit from each other. Just as science and psychiatry are, or science and anthropology.

Science can’t answer everything, far from it. I suspect love would be reduced to some temporary hormonal imbalance or something, the firing of neurons in certain areas of the brain and who knows what else.

Science should know its place. Sometimes a typical human can answer the question much better.

Thanks for an interesting post Kropotkin, nice brain fodder.

Edit - added the word nomothetic for distinction, obviously the lines are very blurry.

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@Peter_Kropotkin

Technological innovation has dehumanized huge portions of society going back to the late 1800s with the advent of the industrial era, so if you’re looking for mathematical sequences as an ideological or philosophical bridge to make society more socially cohesive fixing its various problems I would say that’s not going to achieve anything.

:clown_face:

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Hopefully because philosophy is not science.
It does not exist to comment on things devoid of interpretation.
Philosophy is a tool for broadening one’s horizons, points of view, to climb and think outside the box.

That requires a level of uncertainty and freedom which math is the antithesis of.

You come here to talk.
If you could replace that with math, then you’d be now typing away on your calculator instead of this forum.

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Yeah this. Latent uncertainty; science hates it, but philosophy loves it. My experience so far, anyway.

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True, people were objectively more intelligent back in the Victorian era, for example, as compared with today. The industrial revolution has led to consistently declining intelligence for multiple different reasons, and we are witnessing a culmination of the consequences of that today.

But that being said, technology and innovation are pretty cool and I would not want to live in a world where they were forbidden or did not exist. In any case what I think is irrelevant, humans are curious creative beings and will tend to push innovation and progress given a long enough time horizon (although certain groups of humans, races and cultures etc., will tend to do this far more than others…).