Philosophy and Mathematics: a Journey between Ontology, Epistemology, Aesthetics, and Technique
edited by Andrea Colombo e Lorenzo Marannino
Philosophy's engagement with mathematics traces back to their contemporaneous emergence in Greek thought, continuing to stimulate original reflections on the enigmas posed by the nature and constitution of mathematical ideality. Despite the increasing specialisation in the sciences, numerous thinkers have made significant contributions to both disciplines.
Philosophical investigations into mathematics span various horizons. At an ontological level, inquiries delve into the being of mathematical ideality. From Plato's Timaeus to contemporary physics, debates persist regarding whether and how mathematical objects belong to the world. In the 20th century, against metaphysical or psychologistic explanations, Husserl's phenomenology attempted to reconcile the objectivity and necessity of mathematical entities with their subjective genesis. He studied the intentional dynamics within which idealities are constituted, marking a pivotal moment in philosophical discourse and influencing also epistemology and aesthetics.
Philosophy has also engaged with mathematics from a methodological standpoint. Descartes, Pascal, and, notably, Spinoza regarded the certainty of mathematical science as an epistemological model for establishing an absolutely grounded and rigorously demonstrated philosophy. This endeavour, however, appeared to decline definitively in the pages of the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which he cautioned against importing the axiomatic-deductive method into philosophy, advocating for an approach free from predetermined postulates. Hegelian logic itself represents the peak of attempts to address the longstanding challenge that classical logic and mathematics have failed to fully resolve: the demonstration of foundational principles.
Reflection on mathematical objectivities has also found an important place in aesthetics, not only through the prominent role of mathematical proportions in the figurative arts, architecture, or music but also concerning the concrete practice of mathematical demonstration. As highlighted by mathematician and phenomenologist Gian-Carlo Rota, in the structure of a demonstration there is a particular dimension of beauty, which serves also as a criterion for evaluating the proof itself.
Ultimately, digital innovations have opened up an additional horizon of problems for philosophical reflection. These questions concern the possibility that the new so-called Artificial Intelligence may be capable of making real progress in the field of mathematics. Specifically, beyond merely generating numerous conjectures through probabilistic approaches, the question arises whether AI can produce entirely new proofs and "create" novel mathematical entities. The answer to this question would certainly have implications both on how we conceive the status of mathematical objects and on how we think of the relationship between human intelligence and machines.
This issue of 'Scenari' aims to explore the historical, theoretical, and aesthetic dimensions of philosophical engagement with mathematical science, with a specific focus on innovative and original proposals, while also giving special attention to how phenomenological approaches have influenced studies on the topic.
Authors interested are therefore invited to submit contributions on the following topics:
- Historical-philosophical analysis of the relationship between philosophy, technology and mathematics.
- Mathematics in the phenomenological tradition.
- Ontological status of mathematical objectualities.
- Relationship between the philosophical method and the mathematical method.
- Relationship between modes of expression such as language and painting and mathematical objects.
- Role of mathematics in artistic production.
- Aesthetic dimension of mathematical demonstration.
- Artificial intelligence and mathematical demonstration.
Deadline for submitting proposals: December 15, 2024 (andrea.colombo@uniud.it)
Notification of acceptance or refusal of the proposal after the peer review process: February 1, 2025.
Deadline for submitting the final article (after the potential revisions required by the reviewers): March 7, 2025.
From the Grand Tour to mass tourism. Itineraries between aesthetics and society
edited by Leonardo Distaso e Imma De Pascale
Tourism is among the social phenomena that critical thinking is called upon to investigate with some urgency. There is no doubt by now that it has an impact on the daily lives of individuals, on the socioeconomic performance of communities, and thus on the livability and sustainability of art cities themselves, as well as landscape sites and leisure resorts. An aesthetic investigation of tourism or, in the words of Marco D'Eramo, "on the age of tourism" means fulfilling the difficult task of being contemporary in order to understand the metamorphosis that the aforementioned phenomenon is bringing to lifestyles.
Indeed, it seems that contemporary tourism is linked to aspects no longer or not only concerning the cultural enrichment that was typical of the Grand Tour taken between the 16th and 19th centuries, in which the traveler did not consider himself merely a tourist, but was a wayfarer culturally involved in the places he visited. The Grand Tour played a role in the cultural formation of the aristocracy and later of the European upper middle class, an elite who enjoyed the privilege of time freed from work and economic availability that allowed them to study languages and assimilate the culture of the place while, at the same time, contributing to the definition of their own identity in relation to different realities. Mass tourism, born in the 19th century and carried to the extreme consequences of our days requires a reflection as much on the behaviors proper to capitalistic societies, as on the processes of aesthetization of the world starting from a rethinking of time freed from work and the standardization of taste, immersed in a dimension of consumism that totalizes the experiences of the individual-mass. As a social phenomenon, tourism cannot be separated from forms of capitalism as it is among the most important industries of our time, an industry that produces economic capital by exploiting cultural capital or symbolic capital, as Bourdieu puts it. On the one hand, mass tourism has turned cultural assets into goods; on the other hand, it has given rise to the commodification of primary goods declined in the form of aesthetic experiences, from living to eating. Contemporary cities around the world increasingly take on the physiognomy of a theme amusement park involving the local traditions in which the cultural travel component is diminished in favor of the experiential tour.
We should ask what are the needs that move the masses of tourists and how much the demand for tourism depends on the necessity of an escape from daily life to which the culture industry provides relief. Moving within the cultural horizon of Adorno and Horkheimer, we can say that tourism also falls within the cultural industry that acts by indulging the needs that capitalism imposes in the dynamics of alienation that it produces in society. Starting from an investigation of social aesthetics, this call for papers intends to rethink mass tourism in its relation to aesthetic experience.
Key-words
- Tourism and cultural assets
- Mass tourism and the cultural industry
- Tourism and standardization of taste
- Tourism and the aesthetization of the world
- Politics and aesthetics of tourism
- Gastronomic and eno-gastronomic tourism
Deadline for submitting proposals: December 15, 2024 (leonardo.distaso@unina.it)
Notification of acceptance or refusal of the proposal after the peer review process: February 1, 2025.
Deadline for submitting the final article (after the potential revisions required by the reviewers): March 7, 2025.