It is not only Europeans, or Christians, or inheritors of
the Greek tradition, or those philosophically schooled, who have arrived
(semi-independently) at a position of Realism in mathematics.
This, from a most engaging biography of the Indian
number-theorist Ramanujan:
In the West, there was an old
debate as to whether mathematical reality was made by mathematicians or, existing independently, was merely
discovered by them. Ramanujan was
squarely in the latter camp: for
him, numbers and their mathematical relationships fairly threw off clues to how the universe fit
together. Each new theorem was one
more piece of the Infinite unfathomed.
He told a friend: “An equation for me has no meaning unless
it expresses a thought of God.”
-- Robert Kanigel, The Man who Knew
Infinity (1991), p. 66
For more on the theme, click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/Realism
[Footnote: To Kanigel's credit, he has a section towards the end which examines even-handedly the possible influences of Ramanujan's spirituality upon his style of math. The account is neither credulous nor dismissive -- that is all we ever ask.]
[Footnote: To Kanigel's credit, he has a section towards the end which examines even-handedly the possible influences of Ramanujan's spirituality upon his style of math. The account is neither credulous nor dismissive -- that is all we ever ask.]
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