I wanna smoke what Liggoti has been smoking.."only works on paper" what the hell is that!
I like Cioran & Liggoti,only perhaps to sound original they try to sideline Schopenhauer.
Hell,I don't wanna be original,what can BE original on this planet? I’m not ashamed to call myself a Hentrichian or a Schopehaurian thinker.I want THE TRUTH,not the originality.
My sentiments exactly. I want the truth. If Schopenhauer nailed it, then that is that. I do not like to categorize myself, but to be honest, I have to call myself a Schopenhauer Disciple. I wanted to name our message board that, The Schopenhauer Disciples, but I guess I prefer being a little more subtle.
Everything you blurted out resonates with me, and there is much going around in my brain right now. I will leave my "work" on the floor to respond immediately before these things slip my mind.
How to order them? Be patient with me if this all comes out disconnected.
1. This interest you have in a higher, more intuitive approach to mathematics is commendable. It reminds me of what the protagonist of Zamyatin's WE was grappling with ... the square root of negative one. This was his revolutionary act. He switched from the practical (engineering) state sanctioned applied mathematics, the mechanical computational mathematics, to something more resembling art. It is probably no coincidence, and even ironic, that you are gaining insights about your personal quest for mathematical insight from Arthur Schopenhauer, who has been dubbed, "the artist's philosopher."
This discussion has not been exhausted. I think we are starting to scratch the surface of something very deep.
2. This story about the archer from a lower caste ... I am always for the underdog. This is why I am such a fan of SymPy. I am not jealous of those who can afford Mathematica. I think it is absolutely HEROIC what these heads are up to. They are not your typical comic strip heroes, but they are heroes to me.
3. On ignoring Schopenhauer (Cioran?) or diametrically opposing him to get on the map (Nietzsche) ... or pointing out a major flaw in his work so as to feel superior (Ligotti?) ... all I can say is, while I very much appreciate Ligotti and especially Cioran, I am with you as far as giving Schopenhauer the credit due. As we are truth seekers, we are his intended audience.
Schopenhauer wrote very clearly, more like literature than systematic philosophy. I had tried to pass off Ligotti's A Conspiracy Against the Human Race to other inmates in the county lock-up, and there were complaints about the purposely difficult words he used. I had to write a glossary for it. See H-Diaries | Nonsense | 5.5 Jail full-p.180-200 or so ... It was Jail Writings 2015 Level 5 (Part 6) ... If your copy has a folder "nonsense" it would be in n-5.5_Jail_2015_5-CAT.pdf around page 38 to 61 ... if you're curious.
In 2010, after a similar trip through the air-conditioned dungeon, I had sent in Cioran's The Trouble With Being Born, along with a dictionary, of course. I thought it might be great fun, in such an environment, to have to decipher Cioran's aphorisms using a precious dictionary/thesaurus.
Myself, I would prefer Hoffman's inexpensive Calculus series and Axler's "Algebra and Trigonometry". That would take me as close to Heaven as one can get while standing in Hell.
4. There was something else. Too late. It must have slipped away already. Wait, here it is:
With regard to math,when they told me that pi=3.14,I wanted to know why?
Why just 3.14?? I mean, I know how to derive it but WHY exactly 3.14,why not 4.15 or 5.15?
They never told me why..until I happened to read a forgotten German philosopher who has been dead for 200 years.
So,this part of my brain,I’m talking about, it helped & hindered me.
Helped me in this way:I am finally aware about the illusionary nature of all that I see around me.
Hindered me in this way: Unlike my fellow students who just liked to cram the math formulae I tried to dig deeper & so was “left-behind” by them.
Ha! the man to tried to really understand mathematics was told he has no aptitude for it!
I call this being a slow thinker. So much of standard education relies on regurgitation. Do you know the answer? Can you memorize the capitals of cities and recite a list of old white men's names? Do you know Pythagora's Theorem? Can you fill out the forms you will need to fill out when applying for government assistance?
You have to know that the square root of negative one times itself is negative one. I was like, "a negative times a negative is a positive ... a negative times a negative is a positive ..."
I had to see a geometric interpretation with the imaginary axis and the real axis ... That is the only was I can get a better intuitive grasp. Likewise, with pi, I know I have to have a feel for the numerical value that's about 22/7, but besides being a numerical value, it is first and foremost a ratio, roughly 22:7, but, more importantly when it comes to the structures of our intellect, the ratio of the circle's circumference to its diameter. I have to feel that geometric identity ... but, when digitizing that concept into a magnitude, we cannot get around 22/7, which is roughly 3.14285714286. Urrrrrrgh ...
5. Do you think Schopenhauer can help us make mathematics more personal for us? Keep me posted on your findings. I am genuinely interested, as you can imagine. I am going to check out Jason Wilkes's Burn Math Class. The local library does not have a copy. I am going to invest in the hard copy.
Some commenter tried to discredit him, saying he was a "student" of evolutionary psychology, pointing out he was 27. Do you see how people play these tricks? Now, why would I feel I had nothing to learn from someone because of their youth? Maybe Wilkes has been able to articulate things that have frustrated me about the unapproachable mystique of professional and academic mathematics. He mastered in mathematical physics, something his detractor failed to recognize.
Anyway, maybe all this will start to gel together for us, and we can make some breakthroughs.
Outside the halls of academia, just as Schopenhauer would have it. Truth for truth's sake. Math for math's sake. We can handle the truth.