Tasting Numbers

This paper elucidates Augustine’s ontology and phenomenology of numbers in his De musica and develops it into a theory of mathematical hermeneutics through Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method. For Augustine, the science of music is an investigation into the numbers of musical rhythm and harmony, whose ‘numerical soundness’—i.e., their equality and order—name the fundamental mathematical principles informing the beauty of music, as well as all that is beautiful and true. Crucially, I argue that, for Augustine, this numerical soundness is primarily discerned through the intuitive delight of our aesthetic sensibility (sensuales numeri). The function of the calculating reason (iudicales numeri), on the other hand, is reflective upon this sensibility: evaluating its pleasures to help us press on towards a more undistracted and universal delight. The telos of liberal education, unveiled by faith, is the state of flawless delight in the ineffable beauty of God, which coincides with a perfect love for God and neighbors. Using Gadamer’s concepts of taste and tact, I develop this into an Augustinian phenomenology of mathematical taste, which is always directed towards a tactfulness of love. I conclude by proposing that this hermeneutical account of truth can help bridge the modern phenomenological gap that was introduced between the human and the mathematical sciences

Beauty · Hermeneutics · Musical · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Sensibility · Soundness · Taste · Telos · Augustinian Studies and Theology · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy and Literary Analysis