ABSTRACT
The question whether or not our knowledge of the universe can be ‘mathematized’ (to use Alexandre Koyre’s word) is metaphysical; a cognate question, nearer our own time, might be: is there anything in living processes not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry? But it is also a programmatic question, for if the natural philosopher asks whether colour* is substantial or accidental in light he enters upon one kind of technical argument, whereas if he asks for a mathematical analysis of the rainbow he enters on a quite different realm of thought detestable alike to Peripatetics and Romantics. The mathe matical picture of the universe does not answer the questions that non-mathematical philosophers asked, and vice versa. This is quite clear with Galileo, who was the founder of the mathematical philosophy of nature. When Galileo created a mathematical theory of the strength of beams, this had nothing to do with the Vitruvian tradition of architecture, though that too was in its way mathematical: for Galileo considered the properties of things, the architects
the human way of looking at things. More importantly, as we have seen, G al ileo’s treatment of motion in terms of quantitative velocities, accelerations and momenta has nothing to do with the prevailing Aristotelian and post-Aristo telian account of motions in terms of cause. To ask the philosopher therefore to believe the universe capable of mathematization was asking him to pose new questions, accept new answers, and abandon the old issues as no longer inter esting, perhaps utterly meaningless.
