The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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ericmurphy:
| Quote | | Yes, but AF Dave thinks he's won every debate on this board, too, so that doesn't mean so much. |
But has anyone rebutted my stats in the political threads? That's what counts.
........
Let's start with a list:
| Quote | The Ten Greatest Mathematicians of All Time ranked in approximate order of ``greatness.'' To qualify, the mathematician's work must have breadth, depth, and historical importance.
1. Carl F. Gauss
2. Sir Isaac Newton
3. Leonhard Euler
4. Archimedes of Syracuse
5. Euclid of Alexandria
6. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
7. Henri Poincaré
8. Pierre de Fermat
9. Augustin Cauchy
10. Bernhard Riemann
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This covers the entire history of mathematics, and yet what do most of these men have in common? Hint (note that this list is not exhaustive).
Let's look at a few Christian gentlemen:
Leibniz:
| Quote | 11. Influence
Leibniz's mathematics, in parallel to Newton's, made a significant difference in European science of the 18th century. Other than that, however, his contributions as engineer or logician were relatively quickly forgotten and had to later be re-invented elsewhere.
However, Leibniz's metaphysics was highly influential, renewing the Cartesian project of rational metaphysics, and bequeathing a set of problems and approaches that had a huge impact on much of 18th century philosophy. Kant above all would have been unthinkable without Leibniz's philosophy, especially the accounts of space and time, of sufficient reason, of the distinction between phenomenal and metaphysical reality, and his approach to the problem of freedom. Rarely did Kant agree with his great predecessor--indeed, rendering the whole Cartesian/Leibnizian approach conceptually impossible--but the influence was nevertheless necessary. After Kant, Leibniz was more often than not a mine of individual fascinating ideas, rather than a systematic philosopher, ideas appearing (in greatly modified forms) in for example Hegelian idealism, romanticism, and Bergson.
In the 20th century, Leibniz has been widely studied by Anglo-American "analytic" philosophy as a great logician who made significant contributions to, for example, the theory of identity and modal logic. In Continental European philosophy, Leibniz has perhaps been less commonly treated as a great predecessor, although fascinating texts by Heidegger and, much later, by Deleuze, show the continuing fertility of his philosophical ideas.
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Descartes:
| Quote | Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought, consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well. As the inventor of the Cartesian coordinate system, Descartes founded analytic geometry, that bridge between algebra and geometry crucial to the invention of the calculus and analysis. Descartes' reflections on mind and mechanism began the strain of western thought that much later, impelled by the invention of the electronic computer and by the possibility of machine intelligence, blossomed into, e.g., the Turing test. His most famous statement is Cogito ergo sum (French: Je pense, donc je suis or in English: I think, therefore I am), found in §7 of Principles of Philosophy (Latin) and part IV of Discourse on Method (French).
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Pascal:
| Quote | Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote powerfully in defense of the scientific method.
He was a mathematician of the first order. Pascal helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen and corresponded with Pierre de Fermat from 1654 on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.
[....]
Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in economics, especially in actuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future events." [2] However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far. Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the development of the theory include Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace. [note: Huygens and de Moivre were Huguenots -- Paley]
In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths. |
More later, of course.....
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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