Numérisation et incommensurabilité

Abstract

Digital ontologies are presented as a revival of the Pythagorean vision according to which there is a perfect coincidence between being and number, understood as “whole number”. The discovery of incommensurable magnitudes in Greek antiquity overturned this ontological postulate and brought about a wholly new vision of reality through the introduction of the concept of dynamis (the name used by Theaetetus to refer to these new magnitudes), up to the definition of being itself as dynamis that Plato gives in the Sophist. In this paper I will try to show the ontological meaning of the incommensurable magnitudes, which Leibniz also linked to factual truths, magnitudes which, as G. Chaitin clearly states, should not exist in a purely digital ontology.