Posted by
Prof David West on
Apr 26, 2009; 3:57pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Unreasonable-Effectiveness-of-Mathematics-in-the-Natural-Sciences-tp2714601p2718269.html
On Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:13 -0600, "Owen Densmore" <
[hidden email]>
wrote:
> I'm completely of Tegmark's ilk:
I assume that means you would also adhere to the sentiment attributed to
Einstein:
"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human
thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably
appropriate to the objects of reality?" Which contains the
fallacy, "independent of experience."
Thought - and mathematics! - is but a refined metaphor of experience.
(following Lakoff)
davew
> 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
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org