On 9/11/2014 6:36 PM, LizR wrote:
Obviously I haven't read the PDF file with Chs 1-8, which may take me a while - but I do
(mildly) take issue with this assertion.
Mathematics is merely a description of nature. Nature can operate
mathematically
(adverb), but cannot be claimed to ‘be’ the mathematics. Being predictive
with/using
mathematics does not prove nature is made of it. I deal with nature itself.
Not
maths. When you realise this you end up with dual aspect science. A 3 tiered
epistemic framework practical for science
This is of course the position that science has taken for the past few centuries without
realising that there was any alternative. However, now that Max Tegmark (and of course
Bruno) have argued that there is an alternative, simply /claiming/that nature cannot be
made of maths no longer cuts the mustard. It's true that maths being predictive doesn't
"prove that nature is made of maths" because as we know, science doesn't set out to
prove anything, especially not sweeping ontological claims. But it still seems quite
possible to me, at least, that Max may be onto something, because as he points out his
theory explains the "unreasonable effectiveness" of maths in physics - so I will be
interested to hear some counter arguments that explain this effectiveness on a non
universe-is-maths basis. So far I've seen a bit of handwavium, but generally I've been
underwhelmed by the alternatives presented to explain this, which leaves Max's theory
out in front in terms of explanatory power, as far as this particular issue is concerned.
Not that there aren't problems with Max's theory, of course. (It's mind boggling for a
bear of little brain like me to attempt to grasp how it could possibly actually
work....) But it does seem plausible enough to deserve decent counter-arguments.
One counter argument is to note that math has been "unreasonably effective" in Ptolemaic
astronomy, Newtonian physics, fluid dynamics, non-relativistic quantum mechanics, and
other theories which we now think were mere approximations. This seems much more
consistent with mathematics being descriptive rather than prescriptive.
I'd say mathematics is just a matter of being very precise about axioms and what you infer
from them so that you find lots of interesting consequences but don't fall into contradiction.
Brent
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