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Science
In reply to the discussion: Is the idea of "2 + 2 = 4" cultural? [View all]Dr. Strange
(25,916 posts)24. That's true.
But I still don't know if I would call it a cultural issue. I think there's still a universality in the sense that if the Walpiri decided to extend their enumeration, whatever they ended up developing would have to be consistent with every other culture's development. At least, consistent in the sense that if, for example, the Walpiri recognize/come up with the concept of prime numbers, they will find that there are infinitely many of them. No culture has accepted that there are only many finitely many primes (assuming they even look at such things).
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As a mathematician (I most definitely am not) you might be able to support or reject this idea of
chia
Jul 2020
#12
Put two eggs on a table. Now put two more. Count the eggs. Regardless of culture, same answer.
Midnight Writer
Jul 2020
#17
The symbols used to denote the numbers are cultural. Science is not cultural.
applegrove
Jul 2020
#22
This is the old "who has all the answers" philosophy question put on an especially poor platform.
Eugene
Jul 2020
#30
Well, as I recall, Alfred Whitehead and Bertrand Russell spent page after page...
NNadir
Jul 2020
#32
Well, if she tweets in public, "attacking" "Western Imperialism" for supporting 2+2 equals 4
muriel_volestrangler
Jul 2020
#37
This is totally gonna invalidate my thesis on equivariant cohomology theories :(
Lucky Luciano
Aug 2020
#39