Numbers These problematic entities
Arising from Jena, got its tentacles
Round the Humanities to strangle them, it is said.
They do serve the Enlightenment ideals :
Critical Reason and Rationality, by bringing to bear
The concept of Measurement on which
All else rests. Ultimate grasping of it all
Is in the hands of the Mind, forming
Images mediated by those unsolid
Slippery Words, not Equations.
Thought turns to a Third Space where
The likes of Goethe and Pascal exist
Mastering both Science and Poiesis
Where the Geometrical and the Intuitive Mind
Are reconciled without the essence
Of either being lost and the Cultured Man
Roams amongst two disjoint spheres at once.
Then from there, the Mind brings into existence
NO-THING – There you have a THING, to cut the Gordian Knot.
THING : Timeless, unchanging, it becomes
The unmovable Rock : The Ultimate Axiom
Upon which the whole edifice of Mathematics is built