Monday, November 28, 2011

metaphysics of the infinite

Speculum Criticum has an interesting post up HERE concerning Badiou's mathematization of nature.  Meillassoux in similar vein states that the mathematizable properties or powers of a thing is the thing essentially and as it is "most real" apart from the human.  The criticism is that this is a "Pythagoric snare" - that one makes a mistake when

contingent aspects of mathematical models are used to reach cosmological or ontological conclusions.

In conversations that I had awhile back with a colleague of mine - his name was Keith and he was a pretty fervent atheist - but he was also a mathematician from whom I learned much - he would always question my own "Pythagoric snare" in the sense that I read Deleuze, but also Peirce, in order to mathematically reach cosmological and ontological conclusions regarding God.  The center of my mathematical considerations was and still is to this today the metaphysics of infinity, especially as one might take deity to be of an infinite nature, eternal or without limit, and so forth.  Being an atheist Keith was always skeptical of this, but I always did enjoy our conversations.