Controversy: Axiomatisches missverstandnis

• 成果类型: Editorial Material
• 署名作者: Weintraub, ER
• 署名单位: Duke University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-0297.00379
• 发表日期: 1998
• 页码: 1837-1847
• 关键词: theoretical mathematics; cultural synthesis; physics

摘要

From the axiomatic point of view, mathematics appears thus as a storehouse of abstract forms - the mathematical structures; and so it happens without our knowing how that certain aspects of empirical reality fit themselves into these forms, as if through a kind of preadaptation. (Bourbaki, 1950, p. 231) So you believe that the application of mathematics to the physical world is a miracle? If so, then I invite you to admire another miracle; I can travel around the world with my American Express card. You say of the second, 'That's just a network. If you step out of it by so much as an inch, your card will be valueless.' Quite so. That is what I am saying about science, nothing more and nothing less. (Latour, 1988, p. 221).