(urth) barrington interview

[Robert Pirkola]

I must clarify my position because I believe though I have
made several points, I have not explained the reason for having made them.



1.     
Mathematics is a developing body of knowledge,
technique and application that is by no means closed at this point and cannot be talked about as though it is a fully-known “thing”.  As has been pointed out by several posters,
math has been growing and changing radically in its power and scope from
Euclid, through Pythagoras, on up to Newton, Russell, Gödel, Turing, and
beyond.  No doubt it shall continue to
grow as the mysteries we encounter beg to be solved and those investigating
craft stunning and hitherto unknown methods that allow their depths to be
plumbed.



2.     
 I agree
that the intellectually honest individual is probably obliged to be agnostic
about the universality of mathematics (or the existence of God) while also
allowing for a person to profess a belief that is in violation of this seemingly
forced agnosticism for the sake of Faustian striving if nothing else.



3.     
I do not however agree that one is likewise obliged
to be agnostic about the existence of areas of the universe that are not
subject to mathematical understanding.



a.     
This is because if there are such areas of the
universe, and they are not susceptible to our present set of mathematical
tools, nor susceptible to additional mathematical concepts and techniques that
may be developed, then we shall at all times remain in the dark about their
existence.



b.     
If we are in the dark about their existence,
then they must have no influence over the portions of the universe that we are
aware of, and if that is the case, I feel obliged to call their existence, “existence”.



c.     
If however, they do have an influence over the
portions of the universe we can comprehend, experience, and probe with mathematics,
then they themselves must be subject to comprehension through mathematics, but
perhaps mathematics that is yet to be invented.



d.     
If some sentient being is operating in the same
universe that we are such that we might one day have interaction between ourselves and them, then there is a means by which our understanding of the
universe through mathematics and their understanding of the universe (through
whatever system they have developed) can be translated one into the other.



4.     
What everyone initially started talking about
was whether there was a single, correct reading to a Gene Wolfe story, which
could probably best be answered “yes and no”: “yes” in that authorial intention
is a correct reading if it can be recreated from the text and given the
approval of the (presumably non-mendacious) author and “no” in that text is
slippery and even where there is a distinct authorial intention (not always the
case) it is prone to the interpretation of those who get hold of it (with almost
no rules that can be agreed upon to govern the process).  This led to the discussion of mathematics,
with the universe being the true meaning of the work, mathematics being the text, and the human race as the reader. 
This analogy, though obviously capable of stirring spirited debate, is a
poor one.  Human language is a group of
concepts that need not have any objective manifestation in the world for us to
understand them and as such, they are prone to shades of meaning, words in
languages that are “untranslatable”, and imperfect and widely varying
translations when in fact they are deemed translatable.  I am assuming based on the statements made in
this debate that everyone agrees at least that the universe itself is an
objective reality and we are just debating how one is able to understand that
reality.  This is the difference between
a short story or a novel and the universe (not the only one I suppose).  Because there is an objective ground to the study
of the universe, those who come up with different ways of reaching that ground
should be capable of finding some kind of isomorphic operation to translate
from one to the other, or perhaps a synthesis of the two into something else
altogether, but which both participants in the collaboration can agree
upon.   



Therefore to make my position explicit I do not believe that
we know what the full scope of mathematics is and probably never will be able to say that we have closed it for good. 
I withhold ultimate judgment on whether it is universal but proceed as
though it is because of the present evidence and the uselessness of not making
that assumption at this point.  I believe
that texts are both capable of a “correct” interpretation that is in one-to-one
agreement with authorial intention and agree that that same text has several
other “correct” interpretations that appear in spite of the authorial
intention.  I believe that the areas of
the universe that we know nothing about and cannot understand with our brains
may as well not exist because we can know nothing about them, they cannot
influence us, and we can do nothing with the idea except talk and write about
it (and as Magritte and others have somewhat obviously pointed out, the symbol
is not the thing). 		 	   		  
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