Philosophical Insults
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 2:24 PM
| 
1 Comments |
Over at Knowability, Bryan Frances documents some philosophical insults one can find in the literature. Clever jabs are a cottage industry of sorts (what else are academic philosophers to trade in?). But in particular, I liked this one posted in the thread comments:
The subject of infinite numbers is a technical and not very easy branch of mathematics, and those who have not studied it cannot hope to say anything sensible about it. It is quite clear from Mr. Emmet's discussion that he does not know this theory. The consequence is that some of the things he says are just as foolish as the opinion once held by common-sense philosophers that there could not be people at the Antipodes because they would fall off. [...] I should advise Mr. Emmet, before he again ventures to write on the subject, to study Georg Cantor's articles in Mathematische Analen, vols. XLVI and XLIX, and also Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik [...] His only reason for thinking them nonsensical is that he is ignorant of the mathematical arguments in their favour. I do no suppose that Mr. Emmet would accuse geneticists or radiologists of talking nonsense merely because they use words he does not understand. I fail to see why mathematicians should be treated differently.
(Bertrand Russell, "Mathematical Infinity," Mind, Vol 67)
I generally like scathing reviews, so I checked out the original Russell note and the paper he was replying to ("Infinity" by E.R. Emmet, Vol 66). My conclusion? Emmet was every bit the fool Russell claimed he was.
1 Comments:
Noumena at 8:37 PM said... That's a good one. Not all of Russell's nasty reviews are like that, though -- he has a review of Poincare's Science et hypothese where he doesn't even bother trying to understand the conventionalism or criticisms of logicism. He just ends up coming off as an arrogant ass.
