The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actualitySpengler, Oswald
Philosophy
The decline of the West, Volume 1 : $b Form and actuality
Spengler, Oswald
Civilization -- History
_There is not, and cannot be, number as such._ There are several number-
worlds as there are several Cultures. We find an Indian, an Arabian, a
Classical, a Western type of mathematical thought and, corresponding
with each, a type of number—each type fundamentally peculiar and unique,
an expression of a specific world-feeling, a symbol having a specific
validity which is even capable of scientific definition, a principle of
ordering the Become which reflects the central essence of one and only
one soul, viz., the soul of that particular Culture. Consequently, there
are more mathematics than one. For indubitably the inner structure of
the Euclidean geometry is something quite different from that of the
Cartesian, the analysis of Archimedes is something other than the
analysis of Gauss, and not merely in matters of form, intuition and
method but above all in essence, in the intrinsic and obligatory meaning
of number which they respectively develop and set forth. This number,
the horizon within which it has been able to make phenomena self-
explanatory, and therefore the whole of the “nature” or world-extended
that is confined in the given limits and amenable to its particular sort
of mathematic, are not common to all mankind, but specific in each case
to one definite sort of mankind.
The style of any mathematic which comes into being, then, depends wholly
on the Culture in which it is rooted, the sort of mankind it is that
ponders it. The soul can bring its inherent possibilities to scientific
development, can manage them practically, can attain the highest levels
in its treatment of them—but is quite impotent to alter them. The idea
of the Euclidean geometry is actualized in the earliest forms of
Classical ornament, and that of the Infinitesimal Calculus in the
earliest forms of Gothic architecture, centuries before the first
learned mathematicians of the respective Cultures were born.
A deep inward experience, the genuine _awakening of the ego_, which
turns the child into the higher man and initiates him into community of
his Culture, marks the beginning of number-sense as it does that of
language-sense. It is only after this that objects come to exist for the
waking consciousness as things limitable and distinguishable as to
number and kind; only after this that properties, concepts, causal
necessity, system in the world-around, _a form of the world_, and _world
laws_ (for that which is set and settled is _ipso facto_ bounded,
hardened, number-governed) are susceptible of exact definition. And
therewith comes too a sudden, almost metaphysical, feeling of anxiety
and awe regarding the deeper meaning of measuring and counting, drawing
and form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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