Saturday, September 11, 2010

on certainty 655


655. The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability. I.e. : “Dispute about other things; this is immovable – it is a hinge on which your dispute can turn.”



any proposition is contestable –

is open to question –

open to doubt –

the history of mathematics –

is a history of dispute

the point is – you won’t contest any proposition –

if you don’t think about it –

if you don’t examine the assumptions

on which it is based

if you think that substituting one sign or set of signs for another –

is certainty –

well so be it –

but your certainty amounts to –

nothing more than –

playing a game –

which if not for it’s utility –

its applications –

would be virtually mindless

this ‘official stamp of incontestability’ –

is nothing more than rhetoric –

a rhetoric that only reinforces

entrenched ignorance

and stupidity


© greg t. charlton. 2010.