Title: Is math man made, or did math make man?

reply to post by jessejamesxx


Insects build complex structures all the time without math.
We don't need math either, we just like it for it's efficiency.

Math is a man-made concept, and everything it alleges to express exists without it.

“there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.”
-- Max Tegmark

discovermagazine.com...

Originally posted by jessejamesxx

Originally posted by R3KR
I dont understand how nature can be math.
If you measure something you get an inaccurate snap shot.

For example, you measure a block of aluminum, it is 1x1x1 cm square.
But in reality that block is constantly changing shape at the plank scale.. and probably even smaller, we just cant measure that small.

So I think math is a kind of approximation of measurement, never to be exact.. because even if you could absolutely get an accurate measurement, it would change instantly because of reactions going on with electrons and such.

That being said, we can measure at a level where we can use certain things with a level of predictability.
Airplanes, bridges, cars etc...

To the human brain it would be hard to have an accurate measurement. If you had an infinite super computer at your disposal, you could plot every atom/electron in your 4d grid. Man's math is very small view into nature's math, in my opinion.

I guess a big factor behind how you feel about this subject, is how you feel about the idea of a "holographic universe". Nature equaling math doesn't seem like a huge stretch if you feel that our reality is solely located in our brains through perception.

Thats the thing, we never could. would need a super observer outside of everything which is unlikely. The computer you use to plot everything could not be made smaller then the things its plotting, so how could you plot anything accurately ? Would be like plotting ant movements on a grid using only light years. Would always be the same no matter if an ant moved 1 feet or 1000 feet. In our perception, thats a big difference, but to a light year, it wouldnt even register... I hope this example explains what I am talking about.

I do think that holography shows exactly what it is too. The universe is fractal in nature.
I saw a documentary on fractals and a group of scientist were able to accurately plot tree growth just from on branch on a tree in said forest. This proves that in nature its real. That one branch had the whole forest's information in it because it came from that system. Now whos to say you couldn't accurately plot the whole universe from that one branch ? I think it would be possible.

reply to post by supuradam


Thanks for that. I am half way through it right now. It is building up very nicely

Time and space are beliefs. Because math is a measuring tool for both space and time it is a belief. It is simply up to you whether you believe it.

Originally posted by dfrank39
Time and space are beliefs. Because math is a measuring tool for both space and time it is a belief. It is simply up to you whether you believe it.

I also think that our believes determine the reality that we observe but I also think that depending on which corner of the universe we live in we will only observe things that are following certain rules that are valid in certain parts of the universe. We might be able to freely decide which outcome of a quantum event we want to observe but whatever we finally observe won't have broken its mathematical rules while moving into this state, we cannot decide to manifest (== observe) something that is impossible (== does not exist in any of the possible future timelines).

We are inhabiting a mathematical equation or mathematical object, and everything inside this object is constrained by the mathematical definition for this object, even our own consciousness seems to be mathematically bound to move only into certain allowed directions when it is caught inside such an equation.

But maybe there is also a way to leave the equation and chose to inhabit a different one or even reach a state where we can look at these equations from the "outside" and maybe even *understand* them.

Originally posted by Byteman
reply to post by jessejamesxx

 

Insects build complex structures all the time without math.
We don't need math either, we just like it for it's efficiency.

Math is a man-made concept, and everything it alleges to express exists without it.

I think you contradict yourself by making such a statement.
True, bees don't whip out there little calculators when building their little honeycombed structures, but there is plenty of math involved because they always end up with perfectly shaped hexagons.This tells me that math is inherent in nature.
There are many other geometric shapes that exist in nature, except the square because the square is a man made
shape.

reply to post by Alxandro


Math is entirely abstract and man made. The fact that it holds a mirror to nature says more about how reality is imprinted in our psyche.

math made man .


also l2read

reply to post by john_bmth


The calculations and the formulae may be "man made', but the end result is not.
Physics is physics, and variables play a major factor because these same variable are affected by everything around us.

So let's take a fractal for example.


We can recreate this with a mathematical equation. The equation is too complex for it to just happen at random, especially with how many times it repeats it's self. We know that the numbers and variables that go into the equation are man made, but the equation in one way or another has got to be ingrained into the structure of this plant. Maybe it's the "rule" that this plant uses to grow. Maybe after trying many other "rules", as it evolved, it found the perfect one.

Also to those saying that man made math isn't complex enough or that it's inaccurate, look how video games have progressed.. it will progress like that exponentially until we have amazing super computers than can create virtual reality that will seem as real as ours. Just because we can't come up with formulas for what nature has, doesn't mean we won't, and it doesn't mean that some other civilization hasn't already.

In practice, the development of mathematics is governed substantially by human social influences. Not the surface details of the contents (the theorems are true or not), but the decisions on what areas to pursue.

Areas of mathematics useful to people get investigated more. Why was calculus so important? (it forms the basis of all mathematical analysis) .

Because Newton's concept of state and the fact that equations of motion are described classically by differential equations.

And of course statistics is entirely governed by practical considerations.

For a long while, people marveled at the amazing predictive sophistication of mathematics in physics---it seemed to be true from 1750 through 2000.

Well, with string theory it may not be so nice any more---mathematics shows many upon many fascinating and beautiful theories, and surely almost all of them are wrong. And mathematics will not help distinguish them.

Math is not man made, it is discovered by man. The equations were valid long before we knew about them, and will be valid long after man is gone. If we discover another alien civilization, I believe at first some math will be used as an universal greeting, recognized everywhere in universe where intelligence is, not the "we come in peace" phrase, which they would not understand anyway.