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Re: [xmca] In what sense(s) is mathematics a social construction.?

No FK I am not a Platonist.
We cannot think of or describe nature other than through labour processes of some kind. But this does not imply that there are "nature's labour processes" out there somewhere in a Kantian Jenseits, which we mirror. It simply means that we discover objective limits to our subjective will and this takes the form of activity which is both subjective and objective. This goes back to Fichte strangely enough. 

Nominalism and Platonism are not the only choices.

Andy

Ng Foo Keong wrote:

so are you saying that the different forms / brands of maths
(small 'm') of different traditions/civilisations are just
human maps of _The_ Mathematics (big 'm')?

"The maps are not the territory", right?

is there a magic Book, Somewhere Up There, where we can download
all the maths that humans need, and maybe download instant
understanding of maths, so children (and adults) are spared
the pain of trying to work out their understanding of maths?

F.K.


2009/5/1 Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>:

Eric,
the cosmos existed without humans and will exist after us. But we invented
physics, and fairly recently at that. Physics (like mathes) is a human
practice, practiced in a certain community of practice (institutions,
procedures), using a certain range of artefacts (symbols, words, apparatus).

That the material from which artefacts are made and the object of hte
enquiry exists independently of human activity does not prove that the
activity itself exists without humans.

*All* artefacts and forms of activity rest upon a natural world which exists
independently of us. Our practice is constrained by nature, always, and is
never in that sense capricious. I think I can fly ... but I still come
crashing to the ground. Same with maths.

Andy




--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
From Erythrós Press and Media <http://www.erythrospress.com/>.

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