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To: Alamo-Girl; LeGrande
LeGrande: "Math is just a tool that we use to try and describe reality...

Alamo-Girl: By this statement, perhaps you are revealing yourself to be an Aristotlean with regard to math. I am a mathematical Platonist like Penrose, Tegmark, Godel, et al. For instance, the mathematician doesn't invent the geometry, he discovers it.

Count me in as a Platonist too, dearest sister in Christ! For I do disagree with LeGrande here. For two reasons. (1) In the hands of a mathematical formalist, Math is not some passive tool. The mathematical objects selected to express the formalism "shape" any model the formalism constructs. The result may be that the model generated therefrom may not "map to Reality" too well. (2) I believe the foundation of the universe is mathematical or, more precisely, geometrical. The universe is what has evolved from that geometry.

Plato is "alive and well" with us, dearest sister in Christ!

823 posted on 06/17/2009 12:53:04 PM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
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To: betty boop
Yes indeed. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
824 posted on 06/17/2009 12:58:04 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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