Timeline for What would happen if suddenly, 1+1=2 is disproved?
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8 events
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| Jun 1, 2018 at 13:25 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | @Ray: heh. But no. They are called "Arabic numerals" in English, and of course they have an etymological connection with the numerals used in Arabic, but the symbols used when doing mathematics in Arabic are not the same. Look at the numeral 2 and the Arabic ٢. They are at least topologically equivalent, I suppose, and you can especially see the relation when you also compare 3 with ٣ :-) | |
| May 31, 2018 at 22:00 | comment | added | John | One quibble. Newtonian physics is not "wrong." It works perfectly well in the context in which it was discovered. I have never needed to use general relativity in any of my 30 years of physics related work. Newtonian mechanics have severed me well and correctly in my context. What Relativity does, is extend Newtonian physics to properly explain phenomena that occur at near the speed of light, and expand the range of contexts in which we can properly reason about gravity and light. | |
| May 30, 2018 at 16:54 | comment | added | Ray | @SteveJessop At least partly because 1, 2, etc. are Arabic numerals. But your overall point is valid. (i.e. It's a shame that the first part of your comment is wrong, because the second part is very good.) | |
| May 30, 2018 at 9:12 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | You also don't see many Arabic mathematicians claiming that because they use different numerals they have therefore disproved 1 + 1 = 2. So it's a shame that the first part of this answer is wrong, because the second part is very good. | |
| May 29, 2018 at 19:45 | comment | added | Schwern |
Thank you for bringing up Newtonian physics vs Relativistic physics, because finding out 1c + 1c != 2c is exactly what happened. The math was right, but our model for adding velocities was wrong at high velocities, so we fixed the model to match observations. It must take into account the Lorentz factor at high velocities. Similar issues with classical vs quantum mechanics.
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| May 29, 2018 at 14:49 | comment | added | supercat | The symbol "1" would normally be defined as the multiplicative identity, and "2" would normally be defined as the sum of the multiplicative identity with itself. That 1+1=2 wouldn't be an "axiom", but would rather be implied rather directly by those definitions. If one were to define symbols differently, the equation using those symbols might not hold, but adding the multiplicative identity to itself would still yield the sum of the multiplicative identity and itself, regardless of what symbols were needed to write that fact. | |
| May 28, 2018 at 14:31 | review | First posts | |||
| May 28, 2018 at 15:55 | |||||
| May 28, 2018 at 14:27 | history | answered | IvanSanchez | CC BY-SA 4.0 |