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I love how maths books from 100 years ago are perfectly readable even by modern standards, while philosophy texts from the same period are completely inscrutab

I love how maths books from 100 years ago are perfectly readable even by modern standards, while philosophy texts from the same period are completely inscrutable.

nanna 5y ago
There is lots of brilliant philosophy from a houndred years ago (or thereabouts). Try reading Bergson, James, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Russel and Husserl and see if that changes your opinion.
- codeflo 5y ago
  I don’t disagree, but my point is about clarity, not relevance. There’s a reason it’s so uncommon for people to read Nietzsche unguided, or without secondary literature.
  - nanna 5y ago
    Clarity in philosophy is, to draw an analogy with Rich Hickey's argument, akin to ease in programming. A dangerous mask for complexity. Are Plato's dialogues really easier to read than Hegel's dialectic? Only superficially. I got into philosophy with a gnarled copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in my bag. I read it on my own, without guides. And though yes there was a huge amount that I missed, it's anyway an inexhaustible work, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and it transformed my way of thinking. I would argue that's especially what that era sought to achieve (especially as a retort to Neo-Kantianism). Philosophy, like code, should be as hard as the concepts it's trying to express. Not more, and not less.
mkl 5y ago
I think most maths books from back then are pretty inscrutable (and I'm a mathematician). In particular, printing pictures was expensive, so they wrote complex descriptions instead, often using terminology that's hardly seen any more. Maths books have in general become much more accessible at school and undergraduate level.
- codeflo 5y ago
  Depends on the exact branch of mathematics I guess. As a CS major, I found Turing’s paper on decidability very readable, for example. Gödel’s original proof of his incompleteness theorem isn’t too bad either.
  - mkl 5y ago
    Well those are research papers, which have a different purpose, and I suspect in some fields research papers are actually more inscrutable now than then. I'm talking about books intended for an audience like the linked one, high school or early undergraduate. I haven't done an exhaustive survey or anything, but most of the ones I've looked at on calculus, trigonometry, etc. just wouldn't work for most students now; with the improved accessibility, much higher numbers of more diverse students are learning this kind of maths.
claudiawerner 5y ago
I very much disagree - what do you consider philosophy, for instance? I'm a bit of a fan of the history of philosophy, and I've very happily read translations of Plato, Aristotle, Schelling, Feuerbach, and Marx - the only one I've had difficulty with is Hegel. The terminology chonen by the translator to reflect the author's intention is often strange, but it's no different to, say, reading Homer in translation. Personally, I've found that philosophic words and their meanings don't change too much - and there are good arguments with formalism vs anti-formalism to the point where I think that mathematical and formal logic methods may not reflect the insight of some of this "older" philosophy as a whole. That is to say - the fact of being "completely inscrutable" can be something of an advantage if meaning is what you're seeking.

I love how maths books from 100 years ago are perfectly readable even by modern standards, while philosophy texts from the same period are completely inscrutable.

nanna 5y ago

There is lots of brilliant philosophy from a houndred years ago (or thereabouts). Try reading Bergson, James, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Russel and Husserl and see if that changes your opinion.

codeflo 5y ago
I don’t disagree, but my point is about clarity, not relevance. There’s a reason it’s so uncommon for people to read Nietzsche unguided, or without secondary literature.
- nanna 5y ago
  Clarity in philosophy is, to draw an analogy with Rich Hickey's argument, akin to ease in programming. A dangerous mask for complexity. Are Plato's dialogues really easier to read than Hegel's dialectic? Only superficially. I got into philosophy with a gnarled copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in my bag. I read it on my own, without guides. And though yes there was a huge amount that I missed, it's anyway an inexhaustible work, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and it transformed my way of thinking. I would argue that's especially what that era sought to achieve (especially as a retort to Neo-Kantianism). Philosophy, like code, should be as hard as the concepts it's trying to express. Not more, and not less.

mkl 5y ago

I think most maths books from back then are pretty inscrutable (and I'm a mathematician). In particular, printing pictures was expensive, so they wrote complex descriptions instead, often using terminology that's hardly seen any more. Maths books have in general become much more accessible at school and undergraduate level.

codeflo 5y ago
Depends on the exact branch of mathematics I guess. As a CS major, I found Turing’s paper on decidability very readable, for example. Gödel’s original proof of his incompleteness theorem isn’t too bad either.
- mkl 5y ago
  Well those are research papers, which have a different purpose, and I suspect in some fields research papers are actually more inscrutable now than then. I'm talking about books intended for an audience like the linked one, high school or early undergraduate. I haven't done an exhaustive survey or anything, but most of the ones I've looked at on calculus, trigonometry, etc. just wouldn't work for most students now; with the improved accessibility, much higher numbers of more diverse students are learning this kind of maths.

claudiawerner 5y ago

I very much disagree - what do you consider philosophy, for instance? I'm a bit of a fan of the history of philosophy, and I've very happily read translations of Plato, Aristotle, Schelling, Feuerbach, and Marx - the only one I've had difficulty with is Hegel. The terminology chonen by the translator to reflect the author's intention is often strange, but it's no different to, say, reading Homer in translation. Personally, I've found that philosophic words and their meanings don't change too much - and there are good arguments with formalism vs anti-formalism to the point where I think that mathematical and formal logic methods may not reflect the insight of some of this "older" philosophy as a whole. That is to say - the fact of being "completely inscrutable" can be something of an advantage if meaning is what you're seeking.