Nietzsche contra mathematism ...

From Nietzsche's late notebooks:

' "Mechanistic view": wants nothing but quantities, yet force is to be found in quality; mechanistic theory can thus only describe processes, not explain them (2.76) ... Within the mechanistic view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time), that concept ["cause and effect"] reduces to the mathematical formula — using which, as must be emphasised again and again, nothing is ever understood, but is denoted, distorted (2.139) ... Might not all quantities be signs of qualities? ... Reducing all qualities to quantities is nonsense (2.157) ... Our "knowing" restricts itself to ascertaining quantities, but we can't stop ourselves experiencing these quantitative distinctions as qualities (5.36) ... Quantities "in themselves" do not occur in experience, [...] our world of experience is only a qualitative world, [...] consequently logic and applied logic (such as mathematics) are among the artifices of the ordering, overwhelming, simplifying, abbreviating power called life (6.14) ...'

(Nietzsche's emphases. Cf. posts on G. Strawson.)