Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in theNatural Sciences

Posted by Jochen Fromm-4 on Apr 26, 2009; 11:45am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Unreasonable-Effectiveness-of-Mathematics-in-the-Natural-Sciences-tp2714601p2716656.html

That's true. Interesting observation.

-J.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen Densmore" <[hidden email]>
To: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
Cc: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 5:13 AM
Subject: [FRIAM] The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in theNatural
Sciences

>
> I'm completely of Tegmark's ilk:
>   A different response, advocated by Physicist Max Tegmark (2007), is
> that physics is so successfully described by mathematics because the
> physical world is completely mathematical, isomorphic to a  mathematical
> structure, and that we are simply uncovering this bit by  bit. In this
> interpretation, the various approximations that  constitute our current
> physics theories are successful because simple  mathematical structures
> can provide good approximations of certain  aspects of more complex
> mathematical structures. In other words, our  successful theories are not
> mathematics approximating physics, but  mathematics approximating
> mathematics.
>
>     -- Owen
>

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