DIALOG OLEG ARONSON AND ALEXIS SEMIKHATOVA: “the Beauty of mathematics: between scientific objectivity and aesthetic subjectivity”

September 12, 19:30

Second season of the cycle of ‘the Frustration of aesthetics” will open the conversation of mathematics, physics and popularizer of science Alexei Semikhatova with philosopher and fellow, Department of aesthetics of Institute of Philosophy, RAS Oleg Aronson, who will discuss the beauty of mathematics. What does the notion of “beauty of mathematics” today, when the aesthetic category of the beautiful is a big question? Is there a “beauty of mathematics” or is nothing more than a cliché or an oxymoron? How to explain the fact that in the case of the Higgs boson is a physical phenomenon found in nature in the exact form in which it was predicted not too clever mathematical tricks? Can mathematics be applicable to the structure of the universe as a whole? Whether an exact science considered the Universe knowable and predictable and that is to say philosophy?

 

the meeting Place of philosophical aesthetics and Sciences — the phenomenon of “beauty of mathematics", or the possibility of considering mathematics as an object of aesthetic experience, similar to art. On the one hand, we are talking about "mathematical Platonism", which finds expression in the hidden laws of the universe (proportionality, symmetry, Golden ratio, unity in diversity, etc.). These principles, detect through sensory experience “them” in the world of mathematical laws, even since the antiquity are considered universal concepts of beauty. Moreover, as continue to show the latest scientific discoveries, mathematics and the universe are tuned to each other, offering themselves for the knowledge of a series of successive approximations. On the other hand, under the “beauty” professional mathematics mean graceful techniques in the proof of the theorem or in the solution of the problem, so that the manipulation of the numbers can be a source of pleasure.

 

the philosophy of the New time called into question the universality of these principles. Although Immanuel Kant wrote about the "mathematical sublime", its aesthetic categories inherent within human subjectivity, rather than a characteristic of reality. If analytic philosophers (e.g. Bertrand Russell) was fascinated by mathematics, in the twentieth century continental thought, ostracized mathematical universalism and its expansion in the Humanities. Today, however, as in the philosophy of neo-classic Alain Badiou and the ideas of his pupil neorationalist Quentin Meillassoux mathematics acquires a new ontological status. The development of Informatics, bioengineering, neuroscience also tells about the necessary reassessment of the relationship.

Oleg Aronson — Russian art critic, theorist of cinema and television, philosopher, candidate of philosophical Sciences, public figure. The winner of the award of Andrei Bely for humanitarian research (2007).

Alexey Semikhatov — physicist and mathematician, popularizer of science, doctor of physico-mathematical Sciences, chief researcher of the Physical Institute. Lebedev, Russian Academy of Sciences.

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