International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Philosophy
International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1: Philosophy and Metaphysics
Conference proceedings; Medicine -- Congresses; Science and the humanities -- Congresses; Technology -- Congresses
Thus the order-systems of geometry and analysis appear simply as special
cases of the more general order-system of pure logic. The whole, both of
analysis and of geometry, can be regarded as a description of certain
selected groups of entities, which are chosen, according to special
rules, from a single ideal world. This general and inclusive ideal world
consists simply of _all the objects which can stand to one another in
those symmetrical relations wherein the pure logician finds various
statements, or various decisions inevitably standing_. "Let me," says in
substance Kempe, "choose from the logician's ideal world of classes or
decisions, what entities I will; and I will show you a collection of
objects that are in their relational structure, precisely identical with
the points of a geometer's space of _n_ dimensions." In other words, all
of the geometer's figures and relations can be precisely pictured by the
relational structure of a selected system of classes or of statements,
whose relations are wholly and explicitly logical relations, such as
opposition, and whose relations may all be regarded, accordingly, as
reducible to a single type of purely symmetrical relation.
Thus, for _all_ exact science, and not merely for the logician's special
realm, the contrast between symmetrical and unsymmetrical relations
proves to be, after all, superficial and derived. The purely logical
categories, such as opposition, and such as hold within the calculus of
statements, are, apparently, the basal categories of all the exact
science that has yet been developed. Series and levels are relational
structures that, sharply as they are contrasted, can be derived from a
single root.
I have restated Kempe's generalization in my own way. I think it the
most promising step towards new light as to the categories that we have
made for some generations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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