Re: creation
- From: Martin Brown <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:21:48 +0100
Ioannis wrote:
Ο "Paul Schlyter" <pausch@xxxxxxx> έγραψε στο μήνυμα news:didd5b$1t1b$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [snip]
calledEven though mathematics isn't science (instead it's more like philosophy) mathematics is still an essential tool of science. Sometimes math is"the language of science". Without math, your understanding of sciencewillbe severely crippled. Math provides the numbers, and science tells us how to interpret these numbers.
I've been lurking on this thread, being qurious to see what it will turn into. Some posters wrote that "Mathematics is a 'tool' of science", others (you in particular) wrote that "Mathematics is the language of science".
The above is true of applied Mathematics, mostly.
Applied mathematics and theoretical physics are extremely similar. The only distinction that I can see is the applied mathematicians are usually slightly more serious about checking their proofs.
Stephen Hawking for instance works at the Department of Applied Mathermatics and Theoretical Physics in Cambridge, UK.
Pure Mathematics serves nobody and it's a 'tool' only as far as the quest for "The Ultimate Truth" is concerned. The fact that we happen to be fortunate/able to model parts of our universe using some nice Mathematics, is actually a bonus, because reality is the closest experience we can have of "The Ultimate Truth".
Some as yet "pure" mathematics may still describe our universe even if it isn't widely recognised yet or is waiting for someone to spot the right connection. The formal development of non-Euclidean geometry by Beltrami in 1868 was not intended to describe the cosmology of our universe. It started out as an exploration of what happens to geometry if the internal angles in a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Non-EuclideanGeometry.html
Clifford algebras are another possible if esoteric example.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CliffordAlgebra.html http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucesjph/reality/ga/intro.html
And some pure mathematics may have no real world applications whatsoever, but is still worth investigating for it's own sake.
The existence of Mathematical truths however, is independent of whether we, God, aliens or anybody can model parts of our/their universe using Mathematics.
Mathematics is a rigorous language for specification of problems and solutions. Formal mathematical proofs can be constructed that show a given set of axioms and rules lead inexorably to specific conclusions.
There is no experimental error in pure mathematics. No need to measure anything or conduct experiments to test hypotheses.
Modern statistical analysis and inference sits on an uncomfortable and heavily contested border between science and mathematics.
Regards, Martin Brown .
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