No. It's not. That's the point. i is a number but it's not a quantity. — fishfry
Perhaps this is pedantic, but even in terms of rotations in the complex plane i does have a couple of associated quantities with its notion of multiplication. It represents an anti-clockwise rotation of 90 degrees and a magnitude of 1 in terms of the size of complex numbers — fdrake
I pointed out that it's very difficult to define in general what a number is. You suggested that a number is something that can be quantified or that represents or is a quantity. I gave as a counterexample the number i, which is a number but is not and does not represent a quantity.
You said a quantity is something that can be quantified. I don't find that helpful because it doesn't tell me what a quantity is. If you tell me a cat is a furry domesticated mammal with retractile claws, that's a lot more helpful than saying that a cat is anything that's cat-like. — fishfry
Two apples is not a quantity! Try to wrap your mind around that. As to i being a quantity, you say it isn't. I suspect you're mistaken, but I'll raise the question elsewhere. As to a definition of number, there's no shortage of them. The problem you're having is that you're confused about what definitions are, what they're used for, and how they work. Research it! I will offer this: I think you're making a category error in being confused about what, exactly, is being defined. If your reading truly reflects your thinking, then you have your work cut out for on this. Good luck! .I'd go for it, but you have so clearly exhibited an odd (and annoying) problem with reading that I am stopped from writing further.like 2 apples is a quantity. — fishfry
I do of course agree with you point that 2i is a quantity of two i's, like 2 apples is a quantity. So the question reduces to asking exactly what is a quantity. @tim wood brought up the idea of quantity a while back so I asked him what is a quantity, and so far I have not gotten an answer.
There are too many things going on here but I would like to start with an inquiry on the above statement: specifically is it Peircean or not? I haven't found anywhere Peirce expressed atheism or the like. Or maybe I didn't follow you correctly.And now you don't need some purposeful and transcendent creator. — apokrisis
I would like to start with an inquiry on the above statement: specifically is it Peircean or not? I haven't found anywhere Peirce expressed atheism or the like. Or maybe I didn't follow you correctly. — Dzung
wow, if you happen to have a public link, kindly share. I found only this content http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#aq1 ("I think we must regard Creative Activity as an inseparable attribute of God." C.S Peirce.)... there maybe more pieces but let another time to connect them together.he was more Buddhist on this score — apokrisis
if you happen to have a public link, kindly share. — Dzung
I can't help thinking that the mother of Christianity, Buddhism, is superior to our own religion. (NEM III/2 p. 872)
... tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products of growth, and to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere specialized and partially deadened mind. I may mention, for the benefit of those who are curious in studying mental biographies, that I was born and reared in the neighborhood of Concord - I mean in Cambridge - at the time when Emerson, Hedge, and their friends were disseminating the ideas that they had caught from Schelling, and Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or from God knows what minds stricken with the monstrous mysticism of the East. [6.102]
Being aware of no symmetry from Peirce, I think if we still need to linger on it, we may want to analyze Synechism, not only Tychism. — Dzung
Peirce, as a pantheist, thought God and the cosmos constituted one substance. To introduce his views we will trace the philosophic theme that runs through all four stages of his thought: the cosmos is an infinite semiotic goal-directed evolutionary process that converges on the good and the real....
...Peirce's evolutionary pragmatic idealism was a radically new form of pantheism. He replaced the theist's idea of a "one-shot" creation of the world by the gradual creation of the world through the evolutionary process of Tychism-Synechism-Agapism. He thought of cosmic evolution as a divine learning process. Chance, continuity, and cosmic purposes are all aspects of God, and we humans are parts of this infinite evolutionary divine system. ...
...When asked "Do you believe this Supreme Being to have been the creator of the universe?" he answered "Not so much to have been as to be now creating the universe",...
...Peirce's evolutionary pragmatic idealism is an evolutionary form of pantheism that operates in the opposite direction from emanationism and Spinozism. Whereas the latter theologies proceed from the highest level (God) on down through successively lower levels, Peirce's cosmic evolutionism begins at the simplest level of a random chaos of feelings and gradually improves under the guidance of final causality toward an infinite limit of perfection. Thus Peirce's pantheism is emanationism "turned upside down"...
in deed your above quote is from a letter of him to Williams James. The majority of his quotes are scattered over different kinds of media but I do think all are connected, much like his philosophy about the continuum - Synechism. He also said "I do not agree with you that my papers about the evolution of the Laws of Nature are the best things I have done."[/i] (C.S.Peirce) and "I think unquestionably my best work has been my Logic.". This really helped me to grab a knot from his web.it wasn't connected to his evolutionary cosmology — apokrisis
But do numbers exist? — Purple Pond
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