Talk by Alexander Poddiakov: “Vagueness and Fuzziness in the Space of Scientific Inquiry: Objective Prerequisites and Subjective Experience of Experiencing”
On June 10 at 18:10, the 122nd meeting of the theoretical seminar “Formal Philosophy” took place.
Abstract
The role of vague ideas, concepts, images, and metaphors in mathematics and the natural sciences is examined. The researchers’ comprehension of their own vague and fuzzy ideas (concepts, images, metaphors) that arise during scientific inquiry is discussed. Two authorial autobiographical examples of the development of initially not entirely clear ideas are presented in the fields of: a) ethics; b) mathematics. The second example is supported by the publication history from 2021 to 2026, with an observed pulsation of clarity and obscurity of the evolving ideas. The dynamics of clear and unclear knowledge in children when encountering something unusual at the early ontogenetic stages of the development of thinking, exploratory behaviour, and curiosity is discussed as a source of significant autobiographical memories of adult researchers (little Einstein and the compass being the most famous but not the only example).
