On 18 October 2014 09:47, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 3:42 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> to math make the Big Bang or did the Big Bang make the math? I don't >>> know and I'm not going to pretend that I do. >>> >> >> > I don't see how the big bang could make 2+2=4. Are you saying that in >> another big bang, 2+2=5? >> > > No, but I am saying that maybe we should take it seriously when people say > that mathematics is a language, a language that is extremely well suited > for describing certain things and for telling certain kinds of stories. A > language can tell the story of the first 3 minutes of the Big Bang, or the > story of the construction of the Hoover Dam, or the story of the > construction of Hogwarts. One of these 3 things is not like the others > because we say it is not real, by that we mean it is not in the physical > universe; and the way we have for determining which stories in any language > tells are real is by experiment. So if mathematics really is just a > language, the most logical one conceivable but a language nevertheless, > then it's a human invention and physics is more fundamental than > mathematics and the Big Bang didn't need mathematics or any other language > but mathematics needed the Big Bang. > > Please note I'm not saying any of this is true, I'm just saying it might > be. >
Of course, and as I've agreed many times on this forum it may well be true. The gap in the reasoning is that assuming maths to be a human invention doesn't explain its "unreasonable effectiveness in the physical sciences". Once that's been sorted out convincingly, we can go back to wondering where space, matter and so on *really *come from. > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
