December 31, 2022

Dear Nikola,

To yesterday's letter I add the following:

a) learning and living a language has been for me the best psychotherapy imaginable. I enthusiastically recommend it. However, I refrain from all evangelism.

b) you can rely on me for translation and exegesis of any poem you choose to memorize.

c) https://dict.leo.org/german-english is the most useful German-English dictionary I have found.

d) you ask: Do you continue to play around in the realms of meta-mathematics?  my answer: yes, but not in a manner with which I could pass any of Stephen Cole Kleene's examinations.

e) Leopold Kronecker criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory, and was quoted by Weber (1893) as having said, "Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk" ("God made the integers, all else is the work of man").

f) I interpret Kronecker's assertion in the light of my belief that "all else" includes God himself, - or herself, - as you like it.

g) Along with all the (other) disciples of Aesculapius, I am convinced that all my knowledge derives from observation and understanding of the world around me. I believe that such "observation and understanding" in fact constitues an assimilation of the world within to the world outside of me.

h) With respect to an hypothetical construction of a Metamathematics, i.e.  of understanding the basis of mathematics, I cite two perspectives,

h-1) the limitations and penalties of the symbolism with which we communicate, be it in language or in mathematics.  These diseconomies are seldom acknowledged, but Rilke noted them 124 years ago when he wrote: https://www.deutschelyrik.de/ich-fuerchte-mich-so-vor-der-menschen-wort.html

ORIGINAL
Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort.
Sie sprechen alles so deutlich aus:
Und dieses heißt Hund und jenes heißt Haus,
und hier ist Beginn und das Ende ist dort.
Mich bangt auch ihr Sinn, ihr Spiel mit dem Spott,
sie wissen alles, was wird und war;
kein Berg ist ihnen mehr wunderbar;
ihr Garten und Gut grenzt grade an Gott.
Ich will immer warnen und wehren: Bleibt fern.
Die Dinge singen hör ich so gern.
Ihr rührt sie an: sie sind starr und stumm.
Ihr bringt mir alle die Dinge um.
      Rainer Maria Rilke, 21.11.1898, Berlin-Wilmersdorf

TRANSLATION by Daniel S. Shabasson CUNY Graduate Center
I fear so deeply the words of mankind.
They utter them all with so certain a sound:
and this we call house and that we call hound,
and here is before, and there is behind.
I fear too their thinking, their mocking disdain.
They know the whole past, all things that will be.
For them, no mountain is wondrous to see;
their properties border on God’s own domain.
Pay heed to my warning: now make your retreat.
The singing of things, not words, is what’s sweet.
Your words make things mute, so rigid and gray,
killing them, draining their beauty away.

h-2) I choose to investigate the basis of mathematics in the intersection and superposition of psychological, sociological and theological phenomena.

i) Pertinent psychological phenomena:

i-1) The statics and dynamics of the world that I observe is a function of the manner in which the images on my retinas are interpreted by my mind.

i-2) The statics and dynamics of the world that I imagine is a function of thought as precipitate of language, and it is a function of memory as the inertia and reluctance of mental processes.

j) Pertinent sociological phenomena:

j-1) The symbolic forms, both linguistic and mathematical, in terms of which I think are resultants of my own mental processes and of patterns communicated to me by my associates.

j-2) Individuals cooperate with each other in communicating their mental skills. It is very important to understand and to be understood. Hence the value in explaining and simplifying.

j-3) Individuals compete with each other in exercising and displaying their mental skills. "I know something that you don't know" is an emblem of social status. Hence the value of expositions, obscure to the point of incomprehensibility, e.g. quantum field theory.

k) Pertinent theological phenomena

k-1) If one dates the demise of deity to the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami, then God has been moribund for 268 years. I am unaware of any thinkers since Spinoza (1632-1677) and Leibniz (1646-1716) in whose cosmos deity has been decisive.

k-2) By declining to distinguish "Deus sive natura", Spinoza integrated the divine into human affairs.

k-3) Leibniz regulated the coincident independence of God and men by an implicit redefinition of time, when he hypothesized a mathematical singularity in which God calculated for all time micromanagement of all particles of a cosmos which we now believe to be expanding "forever" at the speed of light.

k-4) Leibniz devised the monad as a quantum for which subjectivity and objectivity coincide, that bridge between body and soul which Descartes had been unable persuasively to locate in the pineal gland.

k-5) I conclude that the essence of Metamathematics is a transcendental rationality for which the pious concept of "God" has served as a vehicle from the days when he first presented himself to Adam in Eden. Arguably "God" is not dead at all but relaxing at his favorite vacation spot, enjoying latter-day agnostics and atheists making fools of themselves.

Thank you for coming to visit me.
EJM