The Center?
Nov 13, 2008 09:28 Filed in: Politics
I would like someone to define the political “center.” Is it possible to come up with a series of centrist propositions, precisely midpoint between the left and the right?
Logic requires that in order to define the center, we must first define the left and right and then (if politics is what mathematicians call a metric space) find the average or mean of the two positions. The aggregate of average positions on major issues would, by definition, be the “centrist” position.
The political space, however, is probably not a metric space—the latter roughly defined as a mathematical structure that includes a way to measure the distance between two elements of the structure—and thus there really is no way to be sure that any policy described as centrist is actually in the political center.
Logic requires that in order to define the center, we must first define the left and right and then (if politics is what mathematicians call a metric space) find the average or mean of the two positions. The aggregate of average positions on major issues would, by definition, be the “centrist” position.
The political space, however, is probably not a metric space—the latter roughly defined as a mathematical structure that includes a way to measure the distance between two elements of the structure—and thus there really is no way to be sure that any policy described as centrist is actually in the political center.
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