The Psychological Solution-10
Man is more permanent than Tom, or Dick, or Harry; this circle is born with the movement of my pencil and dies under the attrition of my eraser, but the conception Circle goes on forever.
attrition，摩擦
This tree stands, and that tree falls; but the laws which determine what bodies shall fall, and when, and how, were without beginning, are now, and ever shall be, without end.
There is, as the gentle Spinoza would say, a world of things perceived by sense, and a world of laws inferred by thought;
感知的世界，法则的世界
we do not see the law of inverse squares but it is there, and everywhere;
it was before anything began, and will survive when all the world of things is a finished tale.
Here is a bridge: the sense perceives concrete and iron to a hundred million tons;
but the mathematician sees, with the mind's eye, the daring and delicate adjustment of all this mass of material to the laws of mechanics and mathematics and engineering, those laws according to which all good bridges that are made must be made;
daring and delicate，有勇有谋的
if the mathematician be also a poet, he will see these laws upholding the bridge;
if the laws were violated the bridge would collapse into the stream beneath;
the laws are the God that holds up the bridge in the hollow of his hand.
Aristotle hints something of this when he says that by Ideas Plato meant what Pythagoras meant by "number" when he taught that this is a world of numbers (meaning presumably that the world is ruled by mathematical constancies and regularities).
Plutarch tells us that according to Plato "God always geometrizes"; or, as Spinoza puts the same thought, God and the universal laws of structure and operation are one and the same reality.
To Plato, as to Bertrand Russell, mathematics is therefore the indispensable prelude to philosophy, and its highest form;
prelude，前沿的
over the doors of his Academy Plato placed, Dantesquely, these words, "Let no man ignorant of geometry enter here."
[ 00’56” ] attrition (摩擦)
[ 03’12” ] Spinoza (斯宾诺莎， 1632 - 1677 年，犹太裔荷兰籍哲学家。斯宾诺莎是一名一元论者或泛神论者。他认为宇宙间只有一种实体，即作为整体的宇宙本身，而“上帝”和宇宙就是一回事。“斯宾诺莎的上帝”不仅仅包括了物质世界，还包括了精神世界。)
[ 06’48” ] Milan Kundera (米兰·昆德拉，小说家，1929出生于捷克斯洛伐克，定居于法国。其长篇小说《不朽》以当代法国社会生活为背景，以世俗人生穷其心智追求的“不朽”为主题，反映出理想化人生在社会现实局限下孤独与荒诞的生存处境，并由此对人终极的自由幸福发出质询。)
[ 06’52” ] immortality (不朽)
[ 11’33” ] Plutarch (普鲁塔克，公元 46 - 120 ，罗马传记文学家、散文家、柏拉图学派的知识分子。)
[ 12’50” ] Bertrand Russell (罗素， 1872 - 1970 年，二十世纪英国哲学家，数理逻辑学家。在现代西方哲学界，逻辑学界以及社会政治领域内，罗素都享有崇高声誉。)
