Re: Should math be held to be literally the 'language of physics'?

From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 11/01/04 

Date: 1 Nov 2004 14:34:09 -0800

"Bill Hobba" <bhobba@rubbish.net.au> wrote in message news:<REfhd.5869$K7.5691@news-server.bigpond.net.au>...
> "robert j. kolker" <nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote in message
> news:2uldquF2bkgahU1@uni-berlin.de...
> >
> >
> > Bill Hobba wrote:
> > > A fully fledged physical theory not written in the language of
> mathematics
> > > would help in the debate. Got any examples?
> >
> > Even a heavily mathematical physics theory needs natural language to
> > establish context. There are no -purely mathematical- theories of
> > physics. There can't be.
> >
> > You can't order a ham on rye with purely mathematical formalism.
>
> Sure. I just wanted an example of one that Patrick would consider where
> math is not the natural language for the ideas expressed. Naturally
> something else is required to set context etc - but such would make a debate
> on if 'In other words, is the language of physics equal to, less than, or
> greater than mathematics?' much more concrete. If such can not be found
> then that in itself is a telling point. And of course, as you correctly
> state, even if mathematics is the natural language of physics (as I believe
> it is) other things are required to set context eg physically what is the
> electric field that appears in Maxwell's equations.
>

I don't think that Kolker would say that "mathematics is the natural
language of physics." I think you got his meaning all mixed up. By
"natural language," I believe Kolker means something more akin to
english, german, or spanish.

Math all by itself is purely syntactic, to use a characterization from
Carnap. By use of one of these "natural languages" one can add a
semantics to the objects and operations in the math by using the
natual language as a meta-language to provide correspondence rules
from the math to the so-called real world.

Patrick

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