Re: Is platonism in math correct?
- From: Toni Lassila <toni@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 11:15:02 +0300
On 4 May 2006 00:53:13 -0700, "will.harris@xxxxxxxxx"
<will.harris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
With proofs like godels and cantors that prove the incompleteness of
mathematics it becomes increasingly more likely that mathematics may
only have marginal relation to the world. For example R^n has an
elasticity and continuity that we can't find anywhere in nature,
results from quantum mechanics seems to increasingly show that
everything is a particle, perhaps even time and space themselves, and
are hence also quantum, which would put them more squarely in the camp
of the discrete phenomena rather than continuous. Relativity shows us
that there is no such thing as a straight lines, it is a figment of our
imaginations, and if there are no straight lines, then there cant be
any such thing as a square, yet math tells us the formula for the area
of a square, even though there is technically no such thing. I prefer
to think of math as a work in progress, that says more about us and our
minds rather than anything solid about the world.
Conversations like this betray a deep misunderstanding about
mathematics. Mathematics can be thought of as a framework for building
models. The models can model the physical world, or they can model
something else. But the models are not the same thing as the object
they model. A model of a bridge is not the bridge.
.
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