nfischer

Ba'al, et.al...excellent topic. The reply of Ba'al to the question of veatch's criticism just points out how closely questions of logic are tied to questions of metaphysics, something of which Veatch was well aware. Pointing out that modal logic is closely tied to the understanding of the world in which to know what things are is to tell us what makes technological innovation is to point out the obvious. In the assumption that there are teleological motions present in nature lies the idea of logic as the attempt to discern the essential character that guides such teleological motion. In the glorification of technological innovation and mathematical flexibility, there is implicit the notion of nature as indifferently extended matter with random motion guided by external force. Let's just say this; I'm not convinced...and neither is Veatch (see his Aristotle, a contemporary appreciation)... that Aristotelean physics was ever 'refuted'; it seems rather that it was replaced by an acceptance the very rhetoric of mechanical success that we see present in Ba'al's reply, and to his greater glory, in Descartes' most interesting works, the Passions of the Soul and the Discourse. Aristotle has been refuted, that is, only once we accept a certain notion of what it means to "demonstrate" something- -and this is, of course, a matter of logic. An interesting book making this argument is Michael Davis' "Ancient Tragedy and Origins of Modern Science". Of course, as Ba'al suggests, this can all be seen as a divergence of opinion on the nature of mathematical reality, as well; I recommend David Lachtermann's "The Ethics of Geometry" and Jakob Klein's "Greek Mathematics and the Origins of Modern Algebra" on these questions. Norm Fischer