...in pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought.
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About Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a 19th-century German philosopher and socialist theorist. Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, journalist, businessman, and revolutionary socialist. He is best known for his lifelong collaboration with Karl Marx, with whom he co-authored The Communist Manifesto (1848) and developed the political and philosophical system that came to be known as Marxism. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Science — Discovery, inquiry, and the wonders of the natural world