On 5/19/2014 7:13 PM, LizR wrote:
On 19 May 2014 13:13, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/18/2014 5:40 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 May 2014 10:06, John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com
<mailto:jami...@gmail.com>> wrote:
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 assume the implication of what you're saying here is that the reason
physics
appears mathematical is because that's the way we think. I suspect most
physicists
would say the opposite - that we think that way because that's how nature
works (or
at least that's how it appears to work so far). If one is going to take the
position that maths is a human invention, then one has the hard problem of
explaining why maths is so "unreasonably effective" in physics while no
other
system of thought comes close.
Not at all. A lot of math was invented to describe theories of physics.
If you
have some idea of how the world is, e.g. it consists of persistent
identifiable
objects, or all matter pulls on other matter; And you want to work out the
consequences of the idea and make it precise with no inconsistencies -
you've
invented some math (unless you can apply some that's already invented - see
Norm
Levitt's quip).
If you want to call discovering that charges and so on obey the inverse square law
"inventing some maths", fine. But it sure looks to me like it was discovered.
Which? That it's possible to have force law of the form F=k/r^a? Or that the value a=2
produces nice elliptical orbits as observered?
All of which implies that maths is something that is discovered, and indeed could be
discovered independently in different cultures, times, places - and on different
planets or in different universes.
I think it only implies that some parts of math are "discovered" like
counting
(which was discovered by evolution) and when people invented language and
logically
inference and concepts like "successor" and "..." they "discovered" there
was a lot
more math they could infer.
Like Maxwell's equations, say? We discovered, and continue to discover, that the world
obeys mathematical rules.
Unless you 'discover' within the human mind.
Well, yes, just like you will "discover" any concept within a mind, by definition. (Or
I guess within textbooks, in a codified form). The evidence seems fairly strong that
you will discover the same mathematical concepts within ANY mind which looks into the
subject, and has sufficient ingenuity to work out the answers to various questions,
because mathematical truths appear to be universal (e.g. Pythagoras' theorem didn't
only work for the Ancient Greeks, 17 will always be prime, the square root of 2 will
always be irrational, etc). Only minds can appreciate these facts, just as only minds
can discover the law of universal gravitation.
Which is a strange thing to say since it turned out there was no such thing
as the
law of universal gravitation; it was just an approximation to another
theory,
general relativity, which we're pretty sure is wrong but we just haven't
been able
to invent a better one. So how is a non-existent law "discovered"?
This one was discovered as an approximation.
Notice how that parses; what is "one"? It's a theory that was /invented/...and turned out
to be only an approximation.
Would you like to bet that the true theory /won't /be describable by maths?
You're missing my point. Every theory (and we never know whether they're true) in the
future will be describable by maths because it's what we require of a scientific
description: precision, logical coherence. Just go back and read your own emails to John
Ross.
Brent
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