Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Yesterday I paid tribute here to a great mathematician. Today I offer a quote from him.  "To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero.  Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as there are usually believed to be."  The significance of that observation may not be obvious outside of some consideration of the history of math, the development of calculus in particular.  But once we do a little grappling with that history, we see that Euler is making a point here that takes us back to ancient Greece.  Back to Zeno, Achilles and tortoise.  If Achilles is to catch up with the tortoise there must be a moment at which the difference between them is zero. One way of looking at the problem is to ask what is the next lower number -- one really really close to zero but still a positive number!  Euler here is saying "That is the wrong way of looking at it." Or, "don't create my...

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was surely one of the most prolific of great mathematicians. Among his contributions, we need to mention two, each of which comes down to us as a single letter: the letter e and the letter i . If we were literally to "pay"tribute, we might do so in increments of $2.72, rounding up a bit the value of irrational e.  We'll get to that. First: biography. Euler was born in Basel, Switzerland, so his life and work might fittingly be considered a riposte to the old anti-Swiss jibe (originally from The Third Man ) that Switzerland has produced nothing for all its years of peace and democracy, nothing more than the humble cuckoo clock.    Since Euler’s day and because of his work, i has stood for the simplest of the numbers that Descartes had called “imaginary.” This i refers to the square root of -1. We don’t need to bother ourselves further with the question “ what is the square root of -1?” It is i , by stipulation.    Also since Eul...

  I hereby inform my readers that I will not be doing the usual post-Supreme-Court term round-up this year.  Most Julys for many years now, I have devoted four long blog entries to the term of the US Supreme Court that has just ended.  This year, I'm not feeling it.  There have been a lot of intriguing decisions this term. I have written posts on some of they as we have proceeded.  But the elaborate round-up? No thanks.  And ...sorry to disappoint.  By the way, the fact that I have just been using the word "round-up" reminds me of the fact that one of the cases decided by the Court this term literally did involve a product named Round Up.  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1068_n7ip.pdf 

    From Quora, question and answer How should I get started with philosophy? I'm 15 years old. That is a very good time for it. You might want to try to define for yourself what kind of philosophy problem most interests you and cluster your readings (and your early manuscripts) there. Many young people are driven by social/political concerns. Can philosophers say something foundational about these concerns? Can it help us get a Big Picture into which the day-to-day headlines and debates will fit? If that is what you mean by philosophy, you might want to look to John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and older figures like Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke. Others are feeling a more existential angst. What is the point of even getting out of bed in the morning? Do my actions matter? Are they determined anyway, so that I am just a ping-pong ball bouncing around? If those questions are what philosophy means to you, I suggest the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a follow-up with the work of Willi...

As soon as Abraham Lincoln received a favorable battle report from Gettysburg in early July 1863, he at once paired the time of year with the time in which the United States had declared its independence from its mother country, and before long Lincoln did the arithmetic.  The two events were separated by 87 years. Months passed before Lincoln spoke on the subject of that battle and its consequences (in November), but his famous address on that occasion begins with the invocation of the length of time that passed between the two events: four score and seven years.  This is likely the only reason the word "score" in that sense remains in the English language.  All of which, as we close in on the 250th anniversary of the same declaration of independence, induces me to ask: what happened just 87 years ago as I write?  That would be 1939. What happened on independence day that year? Four score and seven years ago, legendary first baseman Lou Gehrig delivered a farewell a...

  In Isabellas County, Michigan, the Pung family lost its ranch style home due to a mere $2,242 in disputed taxes.  The country government sold the place for $76K at a public auction. The buyer then flipped it for $195,000.  I'm a recovering anarcho-capitalist, so I will try not to go on too much of a bender about how much this sucks.  But boy is the world of property taxation and enforcement offering up a delicious cuba libre to someone who is trying to get with the twelve steps, here!!! In May 2023, U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Tyler v. Hennepin County that home equity theft is unconstitutional. The Court determined that seizing excess value over a tax debt violates the fifth amendment's taking clause.   So was Pung simply a straightforward application of Tyler ? No such luck.  Lower courts essentially gave the Pungs the difference between the tax debt and the public auction value. But the Pungs asked the Supreme Court to affirm that (...