Aesthetics and the Dream of Objectivity: Notes from Set Theory

摘要

There is every reason to believe that the so-called rationalization of the humanities, that is, the assimilation of the humanities into the sciences-a development spread over centuries but which accelerated in the twentieth century-has greatly benefitted what one might call the progression of ideas: Metaphorical and misleading though such uses of words can be ('the forces of history', 'the river of time', 'turning back the clock') they are pointers to categories and concepts in terms of which we conceive the 'stream of history', namely, as something possessing a certain objective pattern that we ignore at our peril. It is a short step from this to conclude that whatever has a pattern exhibits regularities capable of being expressed in laws; and the systematic interconnection of laws is the content of a natural science.