MSRI Spring « Log24

Log24

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Notes on MSRI (Pronounced “Misery”)

Filed under: General — Tags: MSRI Spring — m759 @ 2:01 pm

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Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul.

Filed under: General — Tags: MSRI Spring — m759 @ 11:45 am

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Kant as Diamond Cutter

Filed under: General — Tags: MSRI Spring, Octad, Physical Brick, The Fano Hallows — m759 @ 4:26 am

"He wished Kant were alive. Kant would have appreciated it.
That master diamond cutter."

— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Part III.

Kant's "category theory" —

"In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant deduces the table of twelve categories, or pure concepts of the understanding….

The categories must be 'schematized' because their non-empirical origin in pure understanding prevents their having the sort of sensible content that would connect them immediately to the objects of experience; transcendental schemata are mediating representations that are meant to establish the connection between pure concepts and appearances in a rule-governed way. Mathematical concepts are discussed in this context since they are unique in being pure but also sensible concepts: they are pure because they are strictly a priori in origin, and yet they are sensible since they are constructed in concreto . "

— Shabel, Lisa, "Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/kant-mathematics/>.

See also The Diamond Theorem and Octad.us.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Identity Problem

Filed under: General — Tags: MSRI Spring — m759 @ 9:01 pm

The phrase “problem of identity” in the previous post suggests a search
for other instances of the phrase. That search yields a talk by Andrei Rodin:

A later book by Rodin echoes Vladimir Arnold‘s remark
that “mathematics is a part of physics.” (Rodin is a Russian
who apparently worships at the Church of Scientism.)