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To: r9etb
Thank you so very much for your excellent post, r9etb!

I guess another way of putting it is: is math invented, or is it discovered?

So very true.

The "unreasonable effectiveness of math" is most evident in physics - dualities, mirror symmetries - and my personal favorite, Einstein's being able to pull Reimannian geometry "off the shelf" to describe relativity. For me, it is breath-taking.

81 posted on 03/17/2005 9:31:19 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
my personal favorite, Einstein's being able to pull Reimannian geometry "off the shelf" to describe relativity.

My favorite is Maxwell's equations ... he added in the "displacement current" (which correlates changes in the electric and magnetic fields), allegedly for reasons of symmetry, not because he'd actually seen something that needed describing.

84 posted on 03/18/2005 6:15:11 AM PST by r9etb
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