Dear Liz, thanks for your care to reflect upon my text and I apologize for my LATE REPLY. You ask about my opinion on Tegmark's "math-realism" - well, if it were REALISM indeed, he would not have had to classify it 'mathemaitcal'. I consider it a fine sub chapter to ideas about *realism* what we MAY NOT KNOW at our present level. Smart Einstein etc. may have invented 'analogue' relativity etc., it does not exclude all those other ways Nature may apply beyond our present knowledge. Our ongoing 'scientific thinking' - IS - inherently mathematical, so wherever you look you find it in the books. I did not find so far a *natural spot* self-calculating 374 pieces of something. and draw conclusions of it NOT being 383. Nature was quite well before humans invented the decimal system, or the zero. And please, do not call it a 'discovery'. Nowhere in Nature are groupings of decimally arranged units presented for processing/registration. Unless you 'discover' within the human mind. Your closing phrase "doesn't mean that it isn't inherently mathematical" is true as to the content it states. It also does not mean that it may not be anything else beyond.
It was a pleasure to follow your argumentation. John M On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 7:36 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 5 May 2014 08:42, John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> In "my" agnostic vocabulary the 'real' includes lots of 'inconnues' that >> may change whatever we THINK is included - as historic examples show. >> I still hold mathematics an exorbitant achievement of the H U M A N >> mind >> > > What do you think of Max Tegmark's argument for "mathematical realism" - > that all the clues we have so far indicate that nature is inherently > mathematical, and that if we ever find a ToE, and it turns out to be "just > a bunch of equations", then there will be no reason to think the universe > is anything other than those equations - as he puts it, "how they look from > the inside" ? > > Obviously this is speculative, of course, in that we don't have a ToE yet. > But everything we have learnt about reality so far does appear to indicate > it has (in some sense) a mathematical nature. If this trend continues and > we eventually discover a TOE, and it is mathematical, would you agree with > Max that maths isn't an invention of the human mind, but something we have > discovered about reality? (That it is even, perhaps, ALL that reality is?) > > >> The facts WE can calculate from Nature do not evidence a similar >> calculation how Nature arrived at them. (See the early (even recent???) >> explanatory errors in our sciences). We are nowhere to decipher Nature's >> analogue(?) ways (if *'analogue' *covers them all, what I would not >> suggest). >> > > Relativity is analogue, quantum mechanics is (perhaps) digital. However, > assuming that nature is analogue - i.e., continuously differentiable - > doesn't mean that it isn't inherently mathematical. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
