[lbo-talk] Review of Badiou's Number and Numbers

ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Mon Jul 27 12:22:38 PDT 2009


On Jul 27, 2009, at 1:51 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> i am still very much working through badiou's works. i have logics
> of worlds
> but have not yet had time to dig into it. but i will reply off-the-
> cuff
> anyway. :)
> i wonder if space couldn't be thought of here as a kind of
> container (in the sense that a set is a container -- which of course
> it isn't, but you see perhaps what i mean). that's
> all i've got, i'm afraid.

And that's more than I have got! One line that struck a chord with me was Morris Kline's point that somewhere in the mid-19th century the emphasis shifted from "physical explanation" to "mathematical description". The field(s) progress at a much faster clip if one were to push the mathematics ahead and let someone like Russell come in and clean up the mess later. This shift is probably a non-issue for died- in-the-wool Platonist for whom there is no ontological discomfort. Heck, such a shift is to him (its almost always a 'him' isn't it?) the very thing called for. Badiou (how does one pronounce his name? Like "adieu"? Or Erykah Badu? ;-)) seems to fit in here if I understand this "mathematics is ontology" business right.

But for the rest of humankind (all the way down to the reificationist) this rapid progress seems to happen on shaky ground, minimally at an intuitive level. In my case, outside of Tarski, few explications make any sense (especially as explications, rather than as applications of mathematics in physics), but correspondence theories and such are much weaker claims than the one that Badiou seems to be making with this one-liner.

--ravi

-- Anyone who takes an effort to intellectually challenge the status quo and established habits is infinitely more venerable than hacks defending that status quo and established habits, regardless of the truth function of their propositions. -- W.Sokolowski



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