Dear GM, PAMHO

AGTSP

AGTYH

              ASA - AGTSP paoho.  AGTYH (All Glories To Yellow Hobbits?).

From a Vaiṣṇava perspective, is there any validity to the comparison between mathematics and religion discussed below?

Thursday, October 24, 2013 An Interview with David Berlinski … But why should we take seriously religious beliefs that are lacking in evidence?

DB: We shouldn’t. But asking someone like Richard Dawkins about the evidence for God’s existence is a little like asking a quadruple amputee to run the marathon. The interesting point is elsewhere. There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time …. … Come again …

DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. …

And this is something that you, a secular Jew, believe? …

DB: What a question! I feel like I’m being interviewed by the Dean at some horrible community college. Do you believe in the university’s mission – that sort of thing. Look, I have no religious convictions and no religious beliefs. What I do believe is that theology is no more an impossible achievement than mathematics. The same rational standards apply. Does the system make sense; does it explain something? Are there deep principles at work. Is it productive? http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html

HpS - Jaya!  Wonderful!  AGTSP.  Paoho.  We have seen other Youtube things on Berlinski. He is very nice person in many ways. His arguments seem totally valid. I think the problem in comparison with Bhagavata philosophy is the definition of what is Mathematics? As I remember the Britannica says that there is no real clear defition of the scope, validity or methodology of what is Mathematics. What is the boundary between Mathematics and Logic? Mathematics and English Grammar, Sanskrit Grammar, Fortran, C++?

In the LOB Prabhupada uses a classical description, Physics is the King of the Sciences and Mathematics is the Queen.

In general, Mathematics would seem to deal with Jnana level of things and Krsna is quite approachable on that level, but Berlinski seems to be going beyond that to the obvious source of Mathematics which is intuitive, Corrollarys, Postulates, Axioms.

Thank you. What is Mathematics?