Posted on 01/23/2014 9:19:28 AM PST by Heartlander
In the Islamic world, it seems everything that is off their radar screen is blasphemy.
Including Einstein, whose belief in God actually helped guide him to find some of his theories.
Even though I love talking and debating this stuff, I'm going to try to not get so immersed this time around - I've got other things to do...
That, my dear, is where we have to part company.
There are two main schools of mathematical "ontology," respectively stating: (1) Mathematics is something that the mathematician discovers (e.g., the platonist school); (2) Mathematics is something the mathematician creates (the formalist school).
I identify with the former; evidently you with the latter.
There is no middle ground.
BTW, after two millennia and counting, this is still an "open question."
But it seems to me the mathematical platonists actually "get things right" more often than the mathematical formalists do. [I have a hunch Einstein, for instance, was a mathematical platonist.]
Actually, your above statement begs some questions: How does man get to be such a sufficiently creative agent, that he can "invent" mathematics and the physical laws? RE: the physical laws — how can he create them, when he's already subject to them? Would he be creating "ex nihilo" here? Or is his putative creative act somehow constrained by reference to the world outside of his mind?
Thank you for writing!
It's okay, PapaNew — I certainly understand!
I argue, as others have done before me, that mathematical concepts and ideas exist objectively, outside of the physical world and outside of the world of consciousness. We mathematicians discover them and are able to connect to this hidden reality through our consciousness. If Leo Tolstoy had not lived we would never have known Anna Karenina. There is no reason to believe that another author would have written that same novel. However, if Pythagoras had not lived, someone else would have discovered exactly the same Pythagoras theorem. Moreover, that theorem means the same to us today as it meant to Pythagoras 2,500 years ago.
- Edward Frenkel
How about physical laws? Are those "created", or "discovered" (bearing in mind some of what we call "physical laws" have had to undergo revision).
Read more closely, my friend. I had already addressed that issue, when I asked: How could a man "create" the physical laws to which he is already fully subject?
What we "created" isn't necessarily what we're subject to, or those laws would never have to be revised.
Perhaps needless to say, I totally agree with his statement.
Mathematics is widely recognized as a universal language.
That being the case, how could finite man "create" a universal?
Well, that's the problem — and the opportunity — for the natural sciences.
I'll close by noting that if "our creation" is purely materialist, it can't even account for ourselves as creators.
Oh, the Hugh Manatee!
Obscure reference to whatever...
You threw a gutterball with a Honeydew..
turn in yer shoes..
VIDEO: C S Lewis on The Magician’s Twin . . . a video critique of Scientism
To you? Not on your best day.
Who said it had to?
Thanks!
I had thought the scientific method was about empirical phenomena; i.e., not simply "material" phenomena. Empirical phenomena are not necessarily completely reducible to or explainable in terms of their material components alone (assuming they have any).
For example, those empirical phenomena known as organic systems in nature have a material basis, but they cannot be completely explained in terms of their observable materiality alone. What cannot be directly observed and measured here is essential to understanding the phenomenon under study. For example, the phenomenon's organizational principles — which are ineluctably non-observable.
Thank you for all of your insights!
Spirited: In the first instance, there are no such entities as "physical" laws. As with dreams, memories, opinions, presuppositions, ideas and reason, laws are of the unseen dimension. A falling object is a temporal manifestation of an unseen 'law' or limitation: gravity. Furthermore, if you were asked to provide "physical" (sensory) evidence of your dreams and memories you would not be able to do so even though every person experiences dreams and memories.
Next, there are only two possible answers regarding the existence of unseen laws: the personal Creator or nature--void, matter, energy.
The difference is that I can conduct an experiment to observe a take measurements of a falling object, and tell you how to reproduce that experiment so that you should be able to make the same observations and measurements. I cannot tell you how to reproduce a dream.
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