mathematics define or create reality?

@The Architect phil,

The Architect wrote:

Mathematics is not an art form or craft. Nor can one alone create the obvious simplicity which fundamentally allows mathematical systems to operate. I'm not looking to mathematicians for answers to my problems; rather, it is the actual mathematics instigating my research. The theory and stratagem involved in solving a mathematical equation result in the formation of methodical technique and herein lies the beauty of the craftsmanship associated with mathematics. The crafters of these theories are judged based upon the clarity and impact of their work, but by no means may these theories explain anything more than a present occurrence in time: an interval that effects something of present and future value. The ultimate summation of the infinite intervals recurrent in today's world would unlock an eternal source of insight for all. This is the search so pertinent right now in my life.

TBA

Very nicely written, but let me say this; searching for meaning or Truth in mathematics is like studying the world by looking in your bathroom mirror. Whatever you 'discover' is a reflection of yourself, not an aspect of 'reality.' The same with all endeavors, good luck though. :bigsmile:

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@BrightNoon,

BrightNoon wrote:

Very nicely written, but let me say this; searching for meaning or Truth in mathematics is like studying the world by looking in your bathroom mirror. Whatever you 'discover' is a reflection of yourself, not an aspect of 'reality.' The same with all endeavors, good luck though. :bigsmile:

Not so Brightnoon... In spite of the opinion offered, Math is a form, and a form of relationship, and A highly useful form of representing physical reality.... I am still trying to apply it to Moral reality...How do I love you??? Let me count the ways... Having exceeded fingers and toes, ears and nose in love, I must resort to my laptop... Now it has done a flip flop... That must mean I am too much in Love...Weth a Yaooooaooo

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@The Architect phil,

I have a post that addresses similar issues: http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-science/4162-nature-mathematical-objects.html

I was wondering what your thoughts were?

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@The Architect phil,

The Architect wrote:

The ultimate summation of the infinite intervals recurrent in today's world would unlock an eternal source of insight for all. This is the search so pertinent right now in my life.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to tell you this, but there's this film "Pi" (i think the directors name is Daren Aronofski) that is about precisely that key you are talking about. You would probably find it interesting.
That mathematician accidently finds a number which seems to fit everything. Soon he is being chased by people who want to profit: Brokers as well as religious fanatics who believe the number is the secret name of god mentioned in the Thora.
The film starts with the words: "One: Mathematics is the language of nature."
Certainly an interesting way of expressing it. The language of nature.
I tend to say that it is simply a description. Or depending on how you use it, a transcription.
The last word shows why it is more than just a human construction. A transcription as well as the lines in a record are a transcription of a music that has been played.
If you wonder about the relation between mathematics and reality you first have to get a really clear concept of what you mean by reality.

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@Exebeche,

Exebeche wrote:

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to tell you this, but there's this film "Pi" (i think the directors name is Daren Aronofski) that is about precisely that key you are talking about. You would probably find it interesting.
That mathematician accidently finds a number which seems to fit everything. Soon he is being chased by people who want to profit: Brokers as well as religious fanatics who believe the number is the secret name of god mentioned in the Thora.
The film starts with the words: "One: Mathematics is the language of nature."
Certainly an interesting way of expressing it. The language of nature.
I tend to say that it is simply a description. Or depending on how you use it, a transcription.
The last word shows why it is more than just a human construction. A transcription as well as the lines in a record are a transcription of a music that has been played.
If you wonder about the relation between mathematics and reality you first have to get a really clear concept of what you mean by reality.

And then; you still only have a concept... One is the magic number... Nature comes in units, and all of existence has been coonceived of as a monad...But then there are people and animals which are dieocious... What then is the true unit???Is two ever one???

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

And then; you still only have a concept... One is the magic number... Nature comes in units, and all of existence has been coonceived of as a monad...But then there are people and animals which are dieocious... What then is the true unit???Is two ever one???

Why is one a magic number? I see nothing magical about it. It is a number that seems to be just as "magical" as two, three, four, etc.

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@The Architect phil,

Well; if I may explain... Every real number has some ratio to one, and every fraction is a part of one...As Aristotle points out; zero has no ratio to one, and it is this fact alone which make nothing inconceivable, and makes death inconceivable....We even conceive of ourselves as individuals, ones; when biologically we are only half of what every microbe is....We count by ones, which is easy enough, and normal that we should so conceive or the world, having one world, one moon, one sun... Number as a concept only has 'One'...All larger numbers are conceptual manifolds, built with so many ones....So is it magical??? Until people could conceive of the individual they could count nothing, because until that time they did not know what they were counting...But morally, the magic number does not have a symbol, but only a name: Enough... Until people know what enough is, they will never be happy...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Math is a form, and a form of relationship

I agree. Math is a form, a structure, a construction.

Quote:

and A highly useful form of representing physical reality

Math corresponds with the reality which we experience, or rather with the reality which we imagine in our minds; experienced reality is very often not in accord with scientific/empiric reality (e.g., a mountain appears to us to be an inch tall from ten miles away, but according to empirical science it is 900 ft. tall). Anyway, my point is that the reality with which math agrees, which math is able to represent, is the reality that we experience. It is reality through the lens of us, from our perspective. To say that we alone concieve of the universe as it truly is is an assumption, and a pretty bold one. I'm not falling into a solipsic argument by the way; I do not deny that a reality exist independently of our experience of it; I'm only saying that said reality is not knowable by us, because it is, by definition, outside our experience of it; hence, the reality we know is not the reality; it is our reality. Thus, math corresponds to or agrees with that reality and, considering that both math and that reality are our creations, is it really suprising that they would agree? Think of it this way. If a madmen sees the world very strangely, but his version of the world is sufficiently coherant and patterned to draw from it general principles or natural laws (e.g., when a orange elephant laughs at me, I smell the ocean), he can have a system built from empiric obersvation, and then a pure logic of mathematic dervied therefrom, which agree with his reality, but none of them are correct. My point is that the fact that math agrees with or represents our reality does not prove that math is 'the truth.' It is only a representation of a truth, for us.

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@The Architect phil,

As far as the question goes; using math to re-create reality, it is no different than any form...Knowledge is judgement said Kant, I think...Forms are judgements, which is to say knowledge...Now, apart from the social and moral purposes of all forms, of structuring relationships, and of our realizing us and our recognizing us; the only purpose of forms and knowledge generally is to recreate our reality better than in is by knowing what it is now...Again, what you say of math as a representation of truth, is true of all form...All forms are forms of knowledge...All forms are forms of relationships... Forms are essential to our being...It is nonsense to talk about us as tool making man... We are formal man, and women... We make forms, and forms make us...

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@The Architect phil,

What kind of truth does math does represent? We can see the effects of mathmatical properties (we can see that one plus one actually equals two), but we can't see why it is true as we can with other representations of reality, the greenness of grass for an example. If mathmatical properties do not correspond to something physical, then what type of reality do they correspond to exactly?

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@The Architect phil,

Simply put mathematics is the universal language of logic. It varies in difficulty just like pidgin English differs from Shakespeare's English.

There are many examples of how mathematics were used to juridic an outcome , the final stone proving Einstein Theory Of General Reality was fact, was the solar eclipse by the moon in 1919.

Astronomers knew that if space did not bend as Einstein predicted in his TOGR the planet Mercy would be hidden behind the sun and not vi sable during the eclipse.

But what happened there was Mercury hanging in the sky when it should have been behind the sun.

The huge gravity of the sun bent space just as the maths predicted and Mercury was visible just as predicted
"Dear Mother, -- Good news today. H.A. Lorentz has wired me that the British expeditions have actually proved the light deflection near the sun."

Einstein's portrait

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@The Architect phil,

Quote:

mathematics define or create reality?

Mathematics is one feature of Reality, just as 'logic' is one feature of Reality.

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

Mathematics is one feature of Reality, just as 'logic' is one feature of Reality.

I agree, the universe is held together by mathematic constants

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@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;62303 wrote:

I agree, the universe is held together by mathematic constants

"If you are a hammer, the universe is made of nails."

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@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall wrote:

I agree, the universe is held together by mathematic constants

The universe seems to be held together by..... And gravity..

---------- Post added at 08:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 PM ----------

nameless wrote:

Mathematics is one feature of Reality, just as 'logic' is one feature of Reality.

They are Forms of reality... That is: They are used by people to form a consistent view, or conception of reality...

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@Fido,

Fido;62323 wrote:

nameless wrote:

Mathematics is one feature of Reality, just as 'logic' is one feature of Reality.

They are Forms of reality... That is: They are used by people to form a consistent view, or conception of reality...

Are you disagreeing with me or translating into your 'reality'?
So, by "forms" of Reality (being the complete universe), you are refering to our different and unique views of the ("forms" of the) universe being a small 'r' reality? One's own unique view of the universe? One unique Perspective, one moment, is one "form"? Is that what you are saying?

One Reality; Different Perspectives.
Sum-total of all Perspectives = One universe/existence/Mind.
Your 'consistent view' + every other view, 'consistent' or not, every concept, every dream, every thought... is one more feature of the 'One Complete Reality', Mind/Consciousness.
We all (Conscious Perspectives) comprise the definition/description of the same 'elephant'!
Perceiver and perceived are One.

("Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!" - Dr. Francois Turdbucket)

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

Are you disagreeing with me or translating into your 'reality'?
So, by "forms" of Reality (being the complete universe), you are refering to our different and unique views of the ("forms" of the) universe being a small 'r' reality? One's own unique view of the universe? One unique Perspective, one moment, is one "form"? Is that what you are saying?

One Reality; Different Perspectives.
Sum-total of all Perspectives = One universe/existence/Mind.
Your 'consistent view' + every other view, 'consistent' or not, every concept, every dream, every thought... is one more feature of the 'One Complete Reality', Mind/Consciousness.
We all (Conscious Perspectives) comprise the definition/description of the same 'elephant'!
Perceiver and perceived are One.

("Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!" - Dr. Francois Turdbucket)

The equasion 1 plus 1 is 2 is the same as calling a blue sky blue... It is an equasion, as are all forms/ideas...We all have different perspectives and only through shared forms/ideas can we reconcile our subjective experiences with an objectively true (consistent) world view... We do not share the same reality, but we do share all our forms of reality through forms which can than be compared, measure for measure, with our reality to determine truth... As a mathematician you must ask why a mathematical model like the Ptolemaic universe should fail??? Its accuracy was always an issue, but the dogmatic approach to reality could for a long time cover the faults of the mathematical model...It helps that the model justified observable reality, that the sun rises and sets...From my understanding, even Plato was aware of the obvious retrograde movement of the planets...Even the notion of a heliocentric universe comes from that day... Yet they are all forms, and we can often see that the forms we share is more a political question than an issue of truth... Some times a politically acceptible world view is safer than so more accurate truth...I would urge you to read The dedication to the revolution of the heavenly spheres to the Pope of that age, by Copernicus...Copernicus sat on the idea for a long time, and only when age threatened his life did he offer the idea to the Pope in the most tentative and respectful fashion...His conclusions were only roughly true..He conceived of the orbits of the planets as circular rather than as parabular, which while more accurate is not exact either... In his shoes I would have done no better, and perhaps much worse...

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@nameless,

nameless wrote:

"If you are a hammer, the universe is made of nails."

I like that quote I really do?

Maths is the language of God

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@The Architect phil,

Just out of curiosity, Al; how would you go about proving that hypothesis???

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@Fido,

Fido;62410 wrote:

The equasion 1 plus 1 is 2 is the same as calling a blue sky blue...

The wheel of Perspectives goes round and round and stops on one that perceives 1+1 equalling 2. Fair enough. That Perspective also might have some very specific notion in mind when he declares the sky as blue.
Any validity of these Perspectives might well be limited to that unique Perspective alone, but are 'realities' (limited as they might be), features of 'Reality'.

Quote:

It is an equasion, as are all forms/ideas...We all have different perspectives and only through shared forms/ideas can we reconcile our subjective experiences with an objectively true (consistent) world view...

If you are a hammer, the world will be made of nails.
If you are a poet, the world will be made of poetry.
A potter, fire and water and clay.
If you are a mathematician, 'that' Perspective will be a world made of 'equations' and 'laws'.
As you suggest, "the complete universe is comprised of/defined as the sum-total of all Perspectives"; mathematical, poetic, irrational, logical, egoic, emotional, conceptual, all unique...
All Perspectives are 'true' (existing) features of Reality/The Universe.
It is impossible for any one Perspective to see any more than his little corner or the Universe. The entire 'picture' of Mind is available to Consciousness alone (there IS nothing else!).
There is no 'objective' view. Classical science has finally received its necessary critical updates from QM!

Quote:

We do not share the same reality,

We view the same 'Mind'/existence, from unique Perspectives.
(Ref; the 'blind' men surrounding the elephant. All perceive 'elephant', although from each 'description', you might not think that they are describing the same 'Reality', but the sum total of these 'realities' is the 'Complete Reality' of elephant!)

---------- Post added at 03:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:20 PM ----------

Alan McDougall;62419 wrote:

Maths is the language of God

Such hubris!
Your dramatic assertion certainly is true (an existing feature of existence) if you see it that way.
One unique 'reality' (Perspective) comprising 'Reality', among many! *__-

---------- Post added at 03:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:20 PM ----------

Fido;62444 wrote:

Just out of curiosity, Al; how would you go about proving that hypothesis???

It's possibly not a hypothesis, but a semi-dramatic poetic metaphor, not to be taken literally (and as such, needs no 'proof').
Not odd, though, that a 'math-head' would imagine a 'god' as a (self-reflected, anthropomorphosized) 'mathematician' speaking in 'equations'.

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mathematics define or create reality?

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