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PYTHAGOREAN_RETREAT

                                             December 27, 2021

The Bertrand Russell essay,
"The Retreat from
Pythagoras" (1959) begins:

    "My philosophical development, since the early years of
    the present century, may be broadly described as a
    gradual retreat from Pythagoras. The Pythagoreans had a
    peculiar form of mysticism which was bound up with
    mathematics. This form of mysticism greatly affected
    Plato and had, I think, more influence upon him than is
    generally acknowledged. I had, for a time, a very
    similar outlook and found in the nature of mathematical
    logic, as I then supposed its nature to be, something
    profoundly satisfying in some important emotional
    respects."




    "I hoped, at that time, that all science could become
    mathematical, including psychology. The parallelogram of
    forces shows that a body acted on by two forces
    simultaneously will pursue a middle course, inclining
    more towards the stronger force. I hoped that there
    might be a similar 'parallelogram of motives'-- a
    foolish idea, since a man who comes to a fork in the
    road and is equally attracted to both roads, does not go
    across the fields between them."


    "I came to think of mathematics, not primarily
    as a tool for understanding and manipulating the
    sensible world, but as an abstract edifice subsisting
    in a Platonic heaven and only reaching the world of
    sense in an impure and degraded form. My general
    outlook, in the early years of this century, was
    profoundly ascetic. I disliked the real world and
    sought refuge in a timeless world, without change or
    decay...



    "Mathematics has ceased to seem to me non-human in its
    subject-matter. I have come to believe, though very
    reluctantly, that it consists of tautologies. I fear
    that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the
    whole of mathematics would appear trivial ..."


    "I think that the timelessness of mathematics has none
    of the sublimity that it once seemed to me to have, but
    consists merely in the fact that the pure mathematician
    is not talking about time. I cannot any longer find any
    mystical satisfaction in the contemplation of
    mathematical truth."



    "The solution of the contradictions ... seemed to be only
    possible by adopting theories which might be true but were not
    beautiful. I felt about the contradictions much as an earnest
    Catholic must feel about wicked Popes. And the splendid certainty
    which I had always hoped to find in mathematics was lost in a
    bewildering maze."

    "One effect of that War was to make it impossible for me to
    go on living in a world of abstraction."




    "What was lost was the hope of finding perfection and finality
    and certainty. What was gained was a new submission to some
    truths which were to me repugnant. My abandonment of former
    beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with
    me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a
    relation to fact, and that facts in general are non- human; I
    still think that man is cosmically unimportant ..."


    "I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to
    sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to
    the 'real' world."


    "I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world,
    like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the
    philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can."



                                             October 04, 2021

                                     (Between Plato's Cave and the
                                     Pythagoras Retreat this is
                                     starting to sound like a
                                     series of 70s porn movies)




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