it's the Science vs. Ideology show

bill fancher fancher at pacbell.net
Mon Nov 1 11:20:58 PST 1999


Daniel Davies wrote:


>>Angela:
>>does anyone know: when did mathematics and philosophy split, btw?
>
> My guess would be that this was "very, very recently, if at all", in that
> Bertrand Russell certainly thought that Wittgenstein was doing the same
> sort of thing in /Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus/ and subsequent writings
> that he and Whitehead were doing in /Principia Mathematica/
>
> dd

The mathematicians and men of science connected, more or less closely, with Alexandria in the third century before Christ were as able as any of the Greeks in the previous century, and did work of equal importance. But they were not, like their predecessors, men who took all learning for their province, and propounded universal philosophies; they were specialists in the modern sense. Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, and Apollonius, were content to be mathematicians; in philosophy they did not aspire to originality. - Bertand Russel, "A History of Western Philosophy" p. 223.

-- science spod



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