There was no math in the universe before we were here. There were however phenomena that could have been described using math were there anyone to do so. Again: universe=territory; math=map. Gravity is not math, but F=Gm1m2/d^2 is math. I don’t understand why you can’t get this.
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Because if one studies General Relativity, one figures out that each point in space-time is a differential operator that uses this math to check what information is in the neighboring locations and then calculate what the particle at this point should do next.
I don’t expect a biologist to understand this. Putting the math out will not cause you to understand it. Since we are talking from different knowledge bases, I don’t see that this is productive anymore. Math is describing what nature is doing. Nature isn’t mimicking what we invented billions of years later. But this isn’t what I am here for. I am here for my view of the flood and I am about to get to your question about brain size.
Now that’s as condescending as possible, and that effectively shuts down any possibility of communication.
Yes, obviously. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. You’re right that I don’t understand; what I don’t understand is how you’re disagreeing with me. I don’t understand how you think nature “uses math” and simultaneously say that math is “describing what nature is doing”; they seem contradictory.
First you gripe that I am condescending for not expecting a biologist to have studied GR. Have I missed something that General Relativity is now part of the biological curriculum? That is just a statement of fact–you could understand after years of math and hard study. It isn’t a question of ability, it is a question of skill. You could rightly say that I am lousy at mineralogy. So what? That is a true statement, nothing for me to get offended about. Or to you feign offence if someone says you can’t run a mile in 3 min.?
If math is invented, then someone outside this universe invented the math the universe uses to move the planets, create the particles, etc. I am through with this thread. forgive me but I don’t have the energy anymore to do both of these threads. Bye John.
No, you’re condescending for claiming I wouldn’t understand. And I don’t even have to understand general relativity to know that the math is descriptive, not the phenomenon itself.
No, the universe doesn’t use math to move the planets, etc. Math is our human attempt to describe what the universe does. A geologist should be able to understand that, even one who’s bad at mineralogy. Hey, I got an A in mineralogy and optical mineralogy.
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Is zero to be considered astronomical?
The universe was doing what the universe does. That does not require math. That we use mathematics when describing aspect of the universe does not imply that the universe itself depends on mathematics.
The universe does not use math to move the planets. We use math to describe the motion of planets.
You seem to just toss out these non-sequiturs all the time. Most of your posts would make more sense if sentences of that type were all prefaced with “I believe that…”. But they all read like you’re claiming to know that such and such is the case. That there is someone “outside the universe”, that that someone invented math, that the universe is capable of using math invented by someone, and that it is using it to figure out how to make stuff of which it is made, move around.
Needless to say that this is a considerable number of blind assertions.
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I really want out of this thread because yall act like there is no position than your position and that simply isn’t true. To many physicists, to say that math doesn’t move the planets is a prima facie false statement. If I am stating non-sequitures, at least I am in good company.
Feynman at least had the humility to know there was a problem.
"I once asked Richard Feynman whether he thought of mathematics and, by extension, the laws of physics as having an independent existence. He replied:
“The problem of existence is a very interesting and difficult one. If you do mathematics, which is simply working out the consequences of assumptions, you’ll discover for instance a curious thing if you add the cubes of integers. One cubed is one, two cubed is two times two times two, that’s eight, and three cubed is three times three times three, that’s twenty-seven. If you add the cubes of these, one plus eight plus twenty-seven-let’s stop here-that would be thirty-six. And that’s the square of another number, six, and that number is the sum of those same integers, one plus two plus three … Now, that fact which I’ve just told you about might not have been known to you before. You might say: “Where is it, what is it, where is it located, what kind of reality does it have?” And yet you came upon it. When you discover these things, you get the feeling that they were true before you found them. So you get the idea that somehow they existed somewhere, but there’s nowhere for such things. It’s just a feeling. . . . Well, in the case of physics we have double trouble. We come upon these mathematical interrelationships but they apply to the universe, so the problem of where they are is doubly confusing. . . . Those are philosophical questions that I don’t know how to answer .” Richard Feynman cited by Paul Davies, The Mind of God, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 144
Physicists have a different view than pure mathematicians.
"If the universe did begin at a singularity from which matter appeared with infinite density and temperature, then we are confronted with a number of problems in our attempts to push cosmology any further. ‘What’ determines the sort of universe that emerges? If space and time do not exist before that singular beginning, how do we account for the laws of gravitation, or of logic, or mathematics? Did they exist before’ the singularity? If so- and we seem to grant as much when we apply mathematics and logic to the singularity itself-then we must admit to a rationality larger than the material universe." John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe, (New York: BasicBooks, 1994), p. 45
Even mathematics has to reach outside of math for its verification.
“In 1931 Kurt Godel, than an unknown young mathematician at the University of Vienna, showed Hilbert’s goal to be unattainable in any mathematical system large enough to include ordinary arithmetic. Whatever set of starting axioms one chooses, whatever set of consistent rules one adopts to manipulate the mathematical symbols involved, there must always exist some statement, framed in the language of those symbols, the truth or falsity of which cannot be decided whether the starting axioms are logically consistent or not. Surprisingly, mathematical truth is something larger than axioms and rules. Try solving the problem by adding a new rule, or a new axiom, and you merely create new undecidable statements. If you want to understand logical truth, you have to venture outside mathematics. If a ‘religion’ is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.” John Barrow, The Artful Universe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) p. 210-211
While I wouldn’t go overboard and indicate that all mathematicians agree with my position, some do.
“By this stage several questions might well have occurred to you. The stance that the universe is unreasonably mathematical seems to presume that mathematics is prior, that it exists "out there:’ Mathematicians unquestionably feel that way. Andrew Wiles, who recently proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, was not long ago overheard to remark on Academy grounds that if another universe existed "the mathematics would be the same:’ Virtually all modern mathematicians share his point of view. G. H. Hardy, in his famous Apology, said, "I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our 'creations; are simply our notes of our observations. Alain Connes, conversing with Changeux, repeats the claim almost verbatim: "[The mathematical world] exists apart from us because, as all mathematicians agree, its structure is independent of individual perception.” Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty, (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), p. 24-25
" The idea that our universe is in some sense mathematical goes back at least to the Pythagoreans, and has been extensively discussed in the literature (see, e.g., [2–25]). Galileo Galilei stated that the Universe is a grand book written in the language of mathematics, and Wigner reflected on the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” [3]. In this essay, I will push this idea to its extreme and argue that our universe is mathematics in a well-defined sense ." Max Tegmark, “The Mathematical Universe,” Found. Phys. April 7 2007, p. 1 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646.pdf
Even Leonard Susskin wrote that those like me, who beleive the world was created by a higher being, have a point.
“This book is about a debate that is stirring the passions of physicists and cosmologists but is also part of a broader controversy, especially in the United States, where it has entered the partisan political discourse. On one side are the people who are convinced that the world must have been created or designed by an intelligent agent with a benevolent purpose. On the other side are the hard-nosed, scientific types who feel certain that the universe is the product of impersonal, disinterested laws of physics, mathematics, and probability-a world without a purpose, so to speak. By the first group, I don’t mean the biblical literalists who believe the world was created six thousand years ago and are ready to fight about it. I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent people who look around at the world and have a hard time believing that it was just dumb luck that made the world so accommodating to human beings. I don’t think these people are being stupid; they have a real point.”
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape, (New York: Little Brown and Co., 2006), p. 6
Just tell those guys they are engaging in nonsequiturs. We are at the yes it is, no it isn’t stage of this conversation which is, well a waste of time.
You don’t even know what my position is. I have not made any statements about my thoughts on the fundamental nature of mathematics, or the laws of physics, in this thread. Incidentally my position on those is “I don’t know”. I don’t know why some entities behave consistently in a way that we can accurately describe with mathematics. I don’t know why the laws and constants of physics are the way they are.
I see that nothing in your post constitutes evidence or support for the non-sequitur I pointed out previously. I have to say that communication with you is difficult because you simultaneously are asserting as fact things you don’t support, while also appearing to rebut arguments nobody here are making.
In this instance you’ve just provided a handful of quotes from people musing and speculating on the ontology of mathematics(or a barely tangentially related subject, like the putative fine-tuning of the physical constants for life), some of which are themselves just more non-sequiturs, or at least blind assertions. Just to point out an example, you do not provide any more of a reason to accept the conclusion in your non-sequitur, by providing a quote from John Barrow basically making a blind assertion. That just makes you two people committing non-sequiturs.
To make matters worse, the quotes don’t even appear to be talking about the same thing(some are about the ontology of mathematical truthes, others are about putative fine-tuning of the universe).
I couldn’t agree more. This kind of appeal to selective quotation is a total waste of anyone’s time. The nature of reality isn’t established by vehement insistence, or popularity.
I won’t press this subject further if you want to spend time time on something else.
I would if they were here. Of course, most of those quotes are irrelevant to your particular claim, because they’re talking about quite different things.
You seem very angry at the world, or at least at people. I suppose that’s understandable.