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alpha0  ·  4918 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vaclav Havel's Critique of the West
This is a very deep topic and ultimately requires one to 'show' as opposed to 'say'. You are 'saying'. You haven't 'shown' me a thing.

> Greek thinkers; most were extremely disinterested in observation.

Of course, but they had at times supremely penetrative insight. Consider Democritus and the Atom.

> Pythagoras believed in a highly idealized world

"Number governs the Universe" is the shared thought. That school was a comprehensive order governing all aspects of life, including mores, hygiene, etc. Anyway, that school only knew of {N}. I am talking {Z} and harmonic systems: http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/load/img/?PPN=PPN235993...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=e%5EiPI+%2B+1

To frame it by more contemporary terms, my philosophical views regarding Mathematics are likely close to Constructivism/Intuitionism: I reject the "excluded middle" [1] as a universal truth, and, more fundamentally consider the entire edifice of time-space (and all objects therein) a construct of mind, a side-effect of cognition. (Recall our previous conversation.) I assert that knowledge requires effort, at a fundamental level and is but the fruit of computation. While I personally like Ludwig far (far) more than Alan Turing, it would appear that Turing (an "empiricist" you should note) was correct and our dear Ludwig was merely philosophizing.

[1]: Of course (!:) I have a wonderful proof 'showing' this, but the internets is too small to contain it ...