Realm Of Objectivity—Pythagoras, Einstein, Whitehead

Discussion In Thin Air Continues

July, ‘80

“Stan I think,” Noel interrupted, “you a victim of your own success. And, I might add, welcome to the club. We’ve all been there. The hardest lesson we have to learn is when to stop when we’re ahead!”

“You mean you’re disagreeing with me,” Stan replied.

“Well yes, because I didn’t say any of that,” Noel responded, “you’re just getting carried away with your own extrapolations.”

“I am?” said Stan, “But I thought you were insinuating, ideally at least, that the function of the conceptual symbolic form was to reduce everything to number, or at least to the simplest possible abstractions.”

“That’s true enough,” Noel replied. “But I didn’t compare Einstein’s success to Pythagoras’s failure, nor did I remotely imply that between the two theories, there was not much difference.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Stan, “I guess I saw it a bit differently. What about Minkowski’s world—a world reduced to numbers? Besides number, the space-time continuum, and the constancy of the velocity of light, what else is left to say about the idea of a ‘fixed and permanent’ realm of objectivity? Anyway, didn’t you say the goal of the conceptual symbolic form was to simplify, simplify to the most necessary relations, simplify to the simplest application of mathematics and law? And didn’t you further say that that determinism must be weighed against the creative aspect of the only symbol-generating animal we know of--man? Did I hear you wrong or what?”

“What’s your point Stan?” replied Noel. “Sure I said those things, but isn’t it a bit of a stretch to link Einstein with Pythagoras, I mean did Pythagoras give us the bomb?

Pythagoras did one better than that,” replied Stan. ”He showed us how to generate harmonies from strings, but don’t get me started on that. It’s not strings were talking about here, its symbolic form and function. From that point of view, Pythagoras was doing the very same thing as Einstein, and, if I heard you correctly, even Einstein’s theory will one day get replaced with a new form of symbolic representation, a new theory that will increase our predictive power and broaden the range of our perceptual field. If you ask me, Einstein and Pythagoras were brothers in arms!”

“You win Stan,” responded Noel, “tell me more about what I said.”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” said Stan, “I’ve lost my train of thought. But I do have a few more observations, albeit a little off the topic.”

“Go for it,” said Noel, “it’s time to move on anyway.”

“Well, it’s not totally new,” Stan replied, “its just that when I was listening to your bantering, I felt like I had heard it all before. In my youth I studied Alfred North Whitehead. In fact, he inspired my desire to attend Harvard. He ended his career teaching there. Did you read him Tony?”

“No, I shy away from metaphysics,” responded Tony. “But I know about him. You can’t go to Harvard without becoming familiar with prestigious alumnae.”