gbesq
·Sorry, you can’t have that! If the applications were there, discovered, surely? Binary answers only, this is the internet.😉
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Sorry, you can’t have that! If the applications were there, discovered, surely? Binary answers only, this is the internet.😉
And to really stir the pot, surely your God created mathematics? Just need to work in some politics to completely burn this thread.
I'll make it even worse. I'm an agnostic, so maybe God exists and he/she/it created mathematical constructs or maybe God doesn't exist and the universe is just the way it is. Besides, would an all knowing, all loving God tolerate a planet that has TWO systems of weights and measures? I think not.
I'll make it even worse. I'm an agnostic, so maybe God exists and he/she/it created mathematical constructs or maybe God doesn't exist and the universe is just the way it is. Besides, would an all knowing, all loving God tolerate a planet that has TWO systems of weights and measures? I think not.
I'm firmly in the camp that math is invented by humans. It is a model of reality, not reality itself. Look up Gabriel's Horn paradox or the Banach-Tarski paradox.
Gabriel's Horn is a particular infinitely long straight trumpet and it is possible to prove that it has finite volume but infinite surface area. It requites an infinite amount of paint to paint the outer or inner surfaces of the horn (it has no thickness). However, because the volume is finite, it is possible to fill the horn with paint. Once you dump out the paint, have you not painted the inner surface?
The Banach-Tarski Paradox says that it is possible to take a solid sphere, break it up into parts, and then reassemble them into two solid spheres of the exact same size as the original. It is possible to prove this without much difficulty, but one cannot do this in reality because the disassembly would require an unaccountably infinite number of impossibly complex cuts.
Also, many aspects of mathematics are arbitrary, it could have been invented in other ways. Although the differences would mostly be inconsequential.
Who has a good meatloaf recipe that they want to share?
I'm firmly in the camp that math is invented by humans. It is a model of reality, not reality itself. Look up Gabriel's Horn paradox or the Banach-Tarski paradox.
Gabriel's Horn is a particular infinitely long straight trumpet and it is possible to prove that it has finite volume but infinite surface area. It requires an infinite amount of paint to paint the outer or inner surfaces of the horn (it has no thickness). However, because the volume is finite, it is possible to fill the horn with paint. Once you dump out the paint, have you not painted the inner surface?
The Banach-Tarski Paradox says that it is possible to take a solid sphere, break it up into parts, and then reassemble them into two solid spheres of the exact same size as the original. It is possible to prove this without much difficulty, but one cannot do this in reality because the disassembly would require an unaccountably infinite number of impossibly complex cuts.
Also, many aspects of mathematics are arbitrary, it could have been invented in other ways. Although the differences would mostly be inconsequential.
Another take on the subject: Pythagoras’ revenge: humans didn’t invent mathematics, it’s what the world is made of (theconversation.com)
Do you have any book/podcast/video recommendations on this topic? As a layperson with an odd interest in epistemology and philosophy, I find this all very interesting. To me, math has always seemed like a great window through which to examine the way that our brains construct our experience of the world. Math can seem to so fundamentally or objectively describe the world, yet as you note, there's slippage between reality and math that points to it being a set of linguistic tools. And, I also find it fascinating how things like math and writing are relatively new human inventions, yet our brains seem so primed to be able to make use of them - and they are so fundamental to our experience of the world.
This video gives a good lay person's intro to set theory and the Banach-Tarski paradox and is quite good in my opinion.
Gabriel's Horn Paradox requires some knowledge of Calculus, I don't see how to understand it without a basic knowledge of Calculus. This video explains it. @p4ul will be happy with it, the guy in the video is a Brit and says "maths"
Who has a good meatloaf recipe that they want to share?