9:04 AM
Gil Student
Once, while I was being examined for entrance to a fairly right-wing yeshiva, the rosh yeshiva asked me what my college major was. When I answered math, he told me that most great talmudic scholars have a natural affinity to math. I had always assumed that this was due to the logic aspect of math and its similarity to talmudic logic, but there might be something deeper to it. The following is from Bertrand Russel, A History of Western Philosophy, p. 37:
Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as in a supersensible intelligible world.
Geometry deals with exact circles, but no sensible object is exactly circular; however carefully we may use our compasses, there will be some imperfections and irregularities.
This suggests the view that all exact reasoning applies to ideal as opposed to sensible objects; it is natural to go further, and to argue that thought is nobler than sense, and the objects of thought more real than those of sense-perception...
The combination of mathematics with theology, which began with Pythagoras, characterized religious philosophy in Greece, in the Middle Ages and in modern times down to Kant.
In Plato, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, there is an intimate blending of religion and reasoning, of moral aspiration with logical admiration of what is timeless, which comes from Pythagoras, and distinguishes the intellectualized theology of Europe from the more straightforward mysticism of Asia.
