Intellectual Method
Formalism can be applied to a set of notations and rules for manipulating them which yield results in agreement with experiment or other techniques of calculation. These rules and notations may or may not have a corresponding mathematical semantics. In the case no mathematical semantics exists, the calculations are often said to be purely formal. See for example scientific formalism.
Read more about this topic: Formalism (philosophy)
Famous quotes containing the words intellectual and/or method:
“Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.”
—Simon Blackburn (b. 1944)
“The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)