ABSTRACT
The previous chapter criticised the language of pragmatism and expediency that sustains the current path of global capitalism. This is why the last chapter discussed the nature of numbers and their role in how we experience the world. In particular, it looked at the way that mathematics has insinuated itself into our temporal experience in order to persuade us that time is a halting process of ‘stasis’, rather than ‘flow’ (see Chapter 11). Mathematics is a profoundly unsituated language, both temporally and spatially. In this sense, it generates an ethical dilemma that is similar to that of design. Both scientists and artists ask for an ideologically ‘neutral’ space within which to think, yet both have to face the unforeseen consequences of their inventiveness. Classical science implies that a citizen might be able to observe ‘reality’ without needing to include his or her role within the account. Early in the twenty-first century, Professor Stephen Hawking was disappointed not to find a TOE (a ‘Theory of Everything’) and has now given up. His quest echoes the claim by Pythagoras that numbers can somehow exemplify everything that exists. For simpleminded non-cosmologists, however, it raises a number of questions about what is meant by ‘everything’. This is a big word. Does it, for example, include you, who are reading this text at this very moment? Does it include what you can see around you and what you can imagine might happen in the next 5 minutes? Does it include your own ‘dream’ of the world? Indeed, does it include your dream of your own ‘dream’ of the world? This raises several more difficult questions. If the human mind is capable of observing, understanding and describing its own condition whilst taking everything else into account, why would we wish to reduce this capability?
