Timeline for Why is mathematics so fantastically successful at describing the universe?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
27 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 8 at 9:56 | comment | added | user21820 | @michael: This post sketches why the usual "indispensability argument" is bogus, and what mathematics exactly is successful at describing the universe. Tegmark's stuff is also totally bogus, and feel free to ping me if you want to know the technical details. | |
| Oct 23, 2023 at 17:54 | answer | added | Mark McKee | timeline score: -1 | |
| Feb 24, 2023 at 21:35 | comment | added | user64727 | what is mathematics? | |
| Feb 24, 2023 at 8:20 | review | Close votes | |||
| Mar 2, 2023 at 3:05 | |||||
| Feb 24, 2023 at 8:03 | comment | added | user64655 | Does this answer your question? Why is math powerful? | |
| Oct 15, 2021 at 16:15 | comment | added | Jordan | My take is that mathematics is good at describing our perception of the universe because it is modeled after the way we think. When we do the math, we are looking in a mirror, and any physics we can do with the universe we are doing with our perceptions and understandings of the universe. | |
| Feb 23, 2021 at 21:29 | comment | added | Ron Inbar | @w128 Yep. Tegmark nailed it. | |
| Nov 2, 2020 at 16:49 | comment | added | CriglCragl | See 'How The Laws Of Physics Lie', by Nancy Cartwright oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/… The 'laws' depend on abstractions, and the mathematics can only be as accurate as the abstractions are valid. We should understand mathematics as the systemising of relations between logical abstractions, and as on a continuum with all abstracting and conceptualising that seeks to reduce complex situations into simpler tractable ones, to allow us to act effectively. So, as cultural, & as subject to cognitive bias, eg. Hilbert programme | |
| Nov 1, 2020 at 21:40 | answer | added | J.G. | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 17, 2018 at 22:42 | comment | added | Richard | Reality contains Mathematics. Sure maths can describe structures with infinite dimensions, but reality allows that. What that says about reality is clearly open to conjecture.. ask any proponent of string theory. Imagine a reality in which it was not possible to equate one thing with another. How would maths do there? | |
| Aug 17, 2018 at 22:03 | answer | added | David Thornley | timeline score: 0 | |
| Aug 17, 2018 at 3:42 | answer | added | Sam | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 30, 2018 at 9:52 | comment | added | user20253 | It's probably best to google. Anything on mysticism/nondualism or the various forms of idealism/hylozoism. . | |
| May 29, 2018 at 16:25 | comment | added | michael | @PeterJ care to elaborate? thanks | |
| May 29, 2018 at 11:55 | comment | added | user20253 | Some would say it's because the world is a product of Mind. | |
| May 29, 2018 at 10:15 | history | edited | michael | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 29, 2018 at 9:40 | answer | added | potato | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 29, 2018 at 8:55 | comment | added | Overmind | Unfortunately, you can put nearly anything in math, including unfounded theories. | |
| May 29, 2018 at 4:28 | answer | added | Dan Hicks | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 28, 2018 at 20:39 | history | edited | Geoffrey Thomas♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
grammar corrected
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| May 28, 2018 at 20:29 | history | edited | michael | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 28, 2018 at 19:55 | comment | added | w128 | Perhaps an interesting take at this is physicist Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, according to which "external physical reality is a mathematical structure". Full paper on this topic is available at arxiv. | |
| May 28, 2018 at 19:41 | answer | added | Geoffrey Thomas♦ | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 28, 2018 at 12:32 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | For a more detailed discussion, see Jane McDonnell, he Pythagorean World : Why Mathematics is Unreasonably Effective in Physics, Palgrave (2017) | |
| May 28, 2018 at 12:20 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| May 28, 2018 at 12:49 | |||||
| May 28, 2018 at 12:20 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | See similar post : what-philosophies-does Wigner's unreasonable-effectiveness-of-mathematics-threaten ? referring to the well-know article by the physicist Eugene Wigner : The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. | |
| May 28, 2018 at 12:05 | history | asked | michael | CC BY-SA 4.0 |