The paradoxical nature of mathematics (Q2055098)

In this paper, the authors develop a new and extremely interesting idea, namely, that the deductive power of mathematics lies in a paradoxical side of its nature, that is, in its closeness to the contradiction. A central idea in this paper is that this paradoxical nature of mathematics takes the form, perhaps exclusively, of the idea of ``finitization of the infinite''. The authors support their thesis by a certain number of interesting examples coming from (1) Euclidean Geometry; (2) Number Theory; (3) Incommensurability and periodic anthyphairesis/ continued fractions as it appears originally in the works of the Pythagoreans, Zeno, Theaetetus and Plato; (5) ratios of magnitudes and the method of exhaustion in weakly finitized forms by Eudoxus; (6) Real numbers and Calculus in the strongly finitized form by Dedekind completeness; (7) Set theory axioms such as the axiom of choice, with special reference to compactness and ultrafilters; (8) Gödel's program on set theory with axioms of large cardinals. At the same time, the authors offer an original interpretation of the Platonic idea of beauty in mathematics as being a philosophical analogue of this finitization of the infinite, expressed precisely in terms of the notion of periodic anthyphairesis. This last idea leads the authors gradually, based on a thorough argumentation, to the conclusion that the feeling of beauty in mathematics, as it is manifested to mathematicians by the sudden and deep understanding of a new idea, or a proof of theorem, is a manifestations of what they call the ``paradoxical, near contradictory deductive power of mathematics''. Among several conclusions they are led to, they express the fact that this beauty and the ``unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'' expressed in \textit{E. P. Wigner}'s famous paper [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 13, 1--14 (1960; Zbl 0102.00703)] are equal manifestations of the same power. Wigner, in this paper, argues that the enormous usefulness of mathematics that we experience in the natural sciences is something touching the mysterious and has no rational explanation, and that the most important questions of our physical originate precisely in this unexplainable usefulness of mathematical concepts. The paper under review makes us dive deep into the philosophy of mathematics. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1466.57001].