mathematics define or create reality?

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...

To me, math doesn't create reality, it just cuts reality up and places those bits into groups or categories. So math is just a reflection of reality which has been chopped up.

Math deduces reality, is my vote...

applied logic). Humans are not. Human assumptions are the power source of logic as a tool, thus human assumptions being uniquely bound to us by our psychology and culture create the human sense of what is rational and what is irrational. Logic is a framework that guides rationality through the assumptions or axioms presented by the user, nothing more.

I agree. Math is a certain system of categories, a system of division. It is arguably the perfection or distillation of all our other systems of division, but in the end it is still a scheme by which the world is divided. And why is the world divided as it is in math? Is it because we have found THE way to divide the world, because only we know the actual way in which monistic 'world' should be organized into things, events, properties, etc.? No, math organizes the world as it does because we are what we are; the specific strcture of math is an expression of our own nature. To understand means to define something in terms of something familiar; we define the world in terms of ourselves. Math reflects ourselves, and our relation to the world, but says nothing about an objective world existent independently of our experience of it. How could it, if math was created from our experience by us, who only know our own experience?

To me, math doesn't create reality, it just cuts reality up and places those bits into groups or categories. So math is just a reflection of reality which has been chopped up.

Math deduces reality, is my vote...

It goes both ways... What mathamaticians should try to realize is that the parts are not equal to the whole....

If it did not wwork on some level its familiarity would be pointless...It helps us to quantify a quality world, and then it helps us to recreate a certain quality better than before. It is no better than the people using it...It is like the great defensive wall of Athens...It makes no one more virtuous, so what is the point??? Comfort first... Security first, and virtue later

I never said it dosen't work; it does: in the ordinary sense of the word. However, the question is what it means for it to 'work.' That we understand how the universe functions? No, only that we have acurately characterized our own world; i.e. we have systemized our experiences.

You're a patient man, Alan. Do you expect to be impotent when you grow up?

Countless??? Does that mean none???

I thought about having children once...That didn't take long...

The wife of the quaker who was most responsible for the human treatment of the insane in america, and the creation of asylums said of the idea: Husband; Thy mind has had many children; but I fear this one is an idiot.

It Means, I don''t know what you mean.. But if you have children you should be able to count them, and if you have no children, you have countless childrren because nothings don't add up...No matter how many nothing you have you only have noothing...

Four children all girls ten grandchildren, cant you perceive a light joke?, why so harsh on an aged old man like tiny little me.

My children are not nothing, as far as I am concerned they are the beauty and life of the universe, which revolves around my being and gives me reason for my existence

See there...You put your glasses on, and you counted just fine....

But I don't where spectacles

I give you credit,, however, for insulting me in the politest of ways and for this I am deeply grateful and your eternal friend, for life see I am even smiling back at your avatar if you have one

If I had something I could say with an avatar; you might not want to see it...

I only wear safety glasses... And I am fifty-five and have grand children too...Newapaper print, or cheap copy paperbacks of classics need a magnifying glass... For most stuff I do not need glasses...I think it is because I exercise my eyes by reading all the time...