Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Posted by Steve Smith on Apr 26, 2009; 4:16pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Unreasonable-Effectiveness-of-Mathematics-in-the-Natural-Sciences-tp2714601p2718324.html

Well said/observed David,  I too am a Lakoff/Johnson/Nunez fan in this matter.

While I am quite enamored of mathematics and it's fortuitous application to all sorts of phenomenology, Physics being somehow the most "pure" in an ideological sense, I've always been suspicious of the conclusion that "the Universe *is* Mathematics". 

This discussion also begs the age-old question of whether we are "inventing" or "discovering" mathematics. Similarly, it revisits the question of whether discoveries in mathematics portend discoveries in Physics (or other, "messier" phenomenological observations).

- Steve

Prof David West 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



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