Abstract
Both mathematics and poetry search for the conditions of intelligibility—the conditions of order, organization, meaningfulness—of the world and human life. Plato’s Socrates proposed, in the Republic, Book VI, that the things of mathematics and the things in the heavens inhabit the realm of Being, of eternity and truth, whereas we human beings find ourselves down here in the world, in the realm of Becoming, of generation and corruption, of opinion. As I noted earlier, we owe to Aristotle, and to Euclid, the useful notion of a middle term; they are both indebted to Plato’s analogy of the Divided Line in the Republic, Book VI, 509d-511e. The analogy is stated in terms of a proportion, the assertion of a similitude (not an equality) between two ratios: the ratio A:B is similar to the ratio C:D and also to the ratio A + B:C + D.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Descartes, R. (2013). Meditations on First Philosophy. J. Cottingham (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cavaillès, J. (1949). Mathématique et fomalisme. G. Canguilhem (Ed.). In Revue international de philosophie 3/8, 3–9.
Cavaillès, J. (1962). Philosophie mathématique. Paris: Hermann.
Euclid. (1956). The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. (Vol. I and II). T. L. Heath (Tr. and Ed.). New York: Dover.
Grosholz, E. and Yakira, E. (1998). Leibniz’s Science of the Rational. In Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 26. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Grosholz, E. (2016). Starry Reckoning: Reference and Analysis in Mathematics and Cosmology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Keats, J. The Complete Poems of John Keats. New York: Modern Library, 1994.
Kuhn, T. (1957). The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Leibniz, G. W. (1976). Philosophical Papers and Letters. L. E. Leomker (Ed.). Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel.
Marlowe, C. (2004). Doctor Faustus. New York: Norton.
Plato (1966) The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Eds.). New York: Bollingen Foundation.
Shakespeare, W. (2004). The Tempest. B. A. Mowat and P. Werstine (Ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster/Folger Shakespeare Library.
Shakespeare, W. (2005). Richard II. B. A. Mowat and P. Werstine (Ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster/Folger Shakespeare Library.
Sinceur, H. (1994). Jean Cavaillès, Philosophie mathématique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Spinoza, B. (1992). Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected Letters. S. Shirley (Tr.) and S. Feldman (Ed.) Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
Yakira, E. (2015). Spinoza and the Case for Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Youschkevitch, A. P. (1976). The Concept of Function up to the Middle of the 19th Century. In Archive for History of Exact Sciences 16/1, 37–85.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grosholz, E.R. (2018). What’s in a Circle? Spinoza, Leibniz, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Keats. In: Great Circles. Mathematics, Culture, and the Arts. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98231-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98231-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98230-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98231-1
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)