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So, here's a question that has intrigued me from time to time: do numbers and mathematics actually exist in the universe or are they inventions of the human mind?
 
Saapanael said:
So, here's a question that has intrigued me from time to time: do numbers and mathematics actually exist in the universe or are they inventions of the human mind?
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The latter. But bloody useful inventions.

To elaborate: Nature doesn't "know" that two plus two is four. It just follows from the way two, plus and four have been defined - by mathematicians. But many phenomena in nature can in fact be described by rather simple (and in the eyes of some, beautiful) mathematics.
 
Saapanael said:
So, here's a question that has intrigued me from time to time: do numbers and mathematics actually exist in the universe or are they inventions of the human mind?
Click to expand...

That's a subjet that interests me a lot. Numbers like π or e do exist, with or without us, for sure. These numbers are result of a relation between things.

Years ago I spent 24 hours without sleeping trying to find the equation of natural spiral by measuring a random snail. I finally found out that my results were very close to Fibonacci sequence -almost identical.
If I'm not wrong Fibonacci found his sequence by observing how the flowers grow. Spiral is the galaxy and our DNA, it applies in music by finding the harmonics and in painting with the golden number.

In any case, I believe that the relations between numbers do exist, in an absolute way and whatever we find beautiful is simply because it exists inside us already. Good example is the spiral galaxy with the spiral DNA or the fact that the harmonic of C is A. We recognise what already exists inside us and what in a bigger scale we are part of.
 
I see your point, no5, but the actual numbers, formulas, axioms and theorems that form the vast field of mathematics, they are all conventions that humans have agreed on. Nature doesn't know divergent and convergent series, limits, empty sets, the number π - not even the idea "circle" which is the main object the number π relates to.
 
Bloody hell! Off the post for AC Milan. What a chance to effectively end Barcelona's hopes of going through.

... and then a certain Argie makes it 2-0.
 
Dr. Eddies Wingman said:
I see your point, no5, but the actual numbers, formulas, axioms and theorems that form the vast field of mathematics, they are all conventions that humans have agreed on. Nature doesn't know divergent and convergent series, limits, empty sets, the number π - not even the idea "circle" which is the main object the number π relates to.
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I see your point as well. The number e is the best example. Fibonacci found it by observing the flowers and I verify it, by measuring a snail. Pythagoras set the basis of the music by observing the planets.
For me Mathematics is an absolute value. I understand that 'our' Mathematics are very poor and conventional.
Yet we went in the moon with those poor Mathematics, we built cars and many other stuff. We built ships by imitating the form of the fish with the help of Simpson's rule. Maybe a poor translation of the nature it is, but it's not thin air. It exists. With or without us.
 
You certainly have a more poetic way of viewing things than me :)

When I see that something I've learnt in a standard mathematics course, actually relates to a natural phenomenon (like the shape of the house of a snail), I think "oh, cool" and think for a while whether there could be some good reason for why the house of a snail grows like that. But I find it hard to believe that it is because nature seeks some mathematically beautiful ideal.

On the other hand: It is quite fascinating that many of the things in nature that humans find of particular beauty, are things that can be described by simple mathematical expressions (like the Fibonacci series, or the golden ratio).
 
When I was doing these personal researches I was writing the results in rhyme. And my music was the music I was fitting to these rhymes. Outside one reads a bizarre story /listens some strange songs, though.

Dr. Eddies Wingman said:
When I see that something I've learnt in a standard mathematics course, actually relates to a natural phenomenon (like the shape of the house of a snail), I think "oh, cool" and think for a while whether there could be some good reason for why the house of a snail grows like that. But I find it hard to believe that it is because nature seeks some mathematically beautiful ideal.
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Nature does not seek anything. We seek. ;)
Our findings are poor translations, yes. But they reflect something that does exist.
 
This is intensely philosophical tonight

Define a 'perfect' circle or a 'straight' line. It's only perfect or straight as far as you're capable of measuring it, or in terms of your own perception
 
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