Milum wrote:
That the universe exists with or without us is a gross assumption.
Well mathematics arises naturally out of us, but then we may be the universe; we (as awareness) may be our perceptions, which would mean everything is a mental construct.
So it’s another “dualism” question. Are physical stuff, the mental realm and consciousness all distinct or are they all one thing?
I had a professor of physics who said that some physicists (including himself) believe that any concept which a mathemetician can invent will be found to exist in the real world.
He was discussing something which moved in a perfect sine wave.(It may have been the tensions in coiled springs, I don’t remember.) His point was that when drawing a graph of the motion he was discussing, the is no “natural” reason to expect the graph to match a graph of a sine wave.
And if no mathematician had yet invented the concept of cosines and sines, the graph would just look like a certain curved shape.But when you know that a totally unrelated, abstract mathematical concept (a sine curve) forms the same shape, then there must be some reason why nature acts mathematically.
He admitted that it is an unprovable, almost religious-like belief, not scientific fact.
Yeah chappachula thats a good example, i’m reminded of the logarithmic spirals that are found in pine cones.
Nature certainly does seem to act mathematically, or to put it another way,
maths seems to play a part in how things are organised.
Iamthat - a clever argument, but not a good one. Saying: “If humans are a part of the universe, and humans created mathematics, then mathematics exists as a product of the universe.” (As i beleive you are saying), does not answer the OP at all. Or are you making some assumptions that i’m not aware of?
Yaaay, Barbie. :dubious:
One of the Buddha’s teachings is that the word is not the thing, and the thing is not the word.
Mathematics is a language, equations, sentences.
The laws of physics exist. They would, do, and shall exist, whether we define them or not, with equations or common languages, or even if we don’t exist.
Mathematics is a human construct and it underlies the universe, if that phrase refers to the fact that most physical processes can be described mathematically.
The first people who did mathematics were interested in numbers and shapes because it helped them do stuff. Later they discovered that numbers and shapes were interesting in their own right. It wasn’t until the 19th century that mathematics was given its own existence as a purely logical construct by Peano, Frege, Russell, etc. But mathematics originated because it was a handy way of describing things, more precise and concise than language, although not as broad as language, and much more difficult, since the human brain does not appear to have the same innate capacity for math as it does for language.
I think Jacob Bronowski wrote: “Math is language that the poetic metaphors of science are written in.”
** Meta-Gumble**
Since all knowledge is known mentally by the mind, and mathematics is a form of knowledge, mathematics is a mental event. As such we cannot know if it represents another realm because we cannot get outside of it, since we cannot know something that is non mental, (except of course consciousness, even though consciousness cannot be known as such.)
Or,
Language and thought always and only refer to themselves, so for example we cannot say anything about X that is not about language. What X is apart from its linguistic representations is unspeakable, and unthinkable.
If X is something other then all its descriptions so is everything else including mathematics, and including all descriptions.
2 is understood as what it represents, not what it actually is, which is void of meaning. So we always read 2 for what it represents not what it is. But the same thing applies to what it represents for whatever 2 represents is also a representation.
As Wittgenstein asked:
“How is it possible that the utterance of a series of noises or writing down a series of marks on paper one can refer to objects in the world and communicate to others what one is referring to?”
Or, How does a representation represent when it is clearly something other?
How does one percept, the word “apple” represent another percept, “the actual apple” ?
So far the arguments seem to be along the lines that maths is purely a human invention and does not underpin the universe. I’m going to lean a little the other way.
It is equally true to say that mathematics exists with or without us. Or to put it another way, those things which are mathematically true will not cease to be true just because we cease to exist.
Second argument.
We must consider why the universe follows mathematical laws. (By way of example, consider mechanics or elementary physics.) The reason is that it is built on the axioms that are elementary to mathematics – such notions of point, line plane etc.
Do these things exist in the real universe? Of course they do. It’s just that defining them exactly is like juggling eels. It doesn’t alter the reality of their existance. Every definable object has a centre of mass at a particular point. It exists, but don’t ask me to find it. An electron has a particular probability of being at a certain point at a precise point in time. Light travels in a straight line. A stream of data is purely and absolutely one dimensional. (It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about phone lines, DNA code or gamma radiation.) Just a few examples of things we observe in the universe that are founded upon such notions as point, line and dimension.
One could perhaps argue that mathematics is built on the axioms of the universe not the other way round. That is to say that the universe undepins mathematics. Which is to make a puzzle out of teh vast quanitity of mathematics that is yet to find practical application and yet to be observe in any context outside of a mathematician’s head.
Personally, I would conjecture that mathematics and the universe are built on the same set of axioms. Neither underpins the other. That is why mathematics is so useful for describing the universe. It is also why the obseved universe reveals so much mathematics. It is also why mathematics exhibits the duality of being discovered/being invented.
It is times like these when I wish I understood more of Godel’s proof.
j_sum1… very nice explaination
The universe at all the levels at which we observe it consists of quantities of stuff interacting with other quantities of stuff (stuff, here, being matter, energy, etc.).
Math has always been a way for us to quantitatively describe the interactions we observe. Of course it’s a human contstruct. Since when does that mean it has no outer relveance?
Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor: The universe exists with or without us.
Iamthat: A rather gross assumption don’t you think?
Milum: Well, Iamthat, name one that is not.
Iamthat: That the universe exists with or without us is a gross assumption.
Milum: Wrong. Below is the only statement known to man that is semantically true and absolute…
_____SOMETHING EXISTS RATHER THAN NOTHING____
Originally posted by j_sum1
How do you know it is true that the universe and mathematics eixts with or without us, if you don’t know the nautre of “us” or “we” or their singular, the nature of the “self”? If you don’t know the nature of the “self” (if there is one) how can you claim what you claim to be true in the above?
Originally posted by Milum
** SOMETHING EXISTS RATHER THAN NOTHING**
I think this is a tautology.
In order to say, “Something exists rather then nothing”, you have to make a comparison between, “something” and “nothing”, but since “nothing” cannot be observed or referred to no comparison can being made.
If “nothing” cannot exist then it is not an option.
If it is not an option then the later part of your sentence, RATHER THEN NOTHING doesn’t provide one.
Limits of language.
On a tangent…I was always intrigued by an idea put out in the book “Contact”. That if we looked close enough in Pi, we would find hidden messages (or a hidden message) left by other beings. Consider that - the most basic relationship in our physical universe - the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a perfect circle - was a TOTALLY CREATED mathematical phenomena, not something found “naturally”. Now, if that very basic physical “truth” was created, what does that say about the whole universe? I suppose that is not such a stretch to some religious folks, but it pretty much blew my mind away.
Well i’m pretty much back where I started…
Iamthat:
I think Bosda was making a similar point when she said “the name is not the thing”… Maybe so, but thats no proof that there aren’t some things that we can’t apprehend and that mathematics isn’t one of those somethings.
…
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. 2 means 2 which is the meaning we have given it. People usually have two legs and would do so regardless of whether we had invented the concept of “two”. The pattern on a pine cone was a logarithmic spiral long before anyone ever knew what a logarithm was.
Originally posted by** Milum**
SOMETHING EXISTS RATHER THAN NOTHING
Posted by Iamthat
I think this is a tautology.
In order to say, “Something exists rather then nothing”, you have to make a comparison between, “something” and “nothing”, but since “nothing” cannot be observed or referred to no comparison can being made.
If “nothing” cannot exist then it is not an option.
If it is not an option then the later part of your sentence, RATHER THEN NOTHING doesn’t provide one.
Limits of language._____________________
Dear Iamthat, your use of the term “tautology” gets in the way of a full comprehension of the simple, but fundamental concept “something exists rather than nothing”. And as a sucessful transfer of meaning is more important than the contrived rules of rhetoric, please allow me to rephrase this most important elemental point of semantic departure …
Something exists as opposed to the absence of everything.
The very fact that it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend the absence of everything proves that “something” exists. But oddly, we can understand “something” only when contrasted with “nothing” which we can not independently understand.
Understand? I think I do. 
It’s very easy to chase yourself round in circles reading this. I’m just not smart enough (or awake enough) to nail the finer points of such mathematical philosophy. I’m going to give in while I’m still one compliment up.
thanx drgnrdr07
I’m a little confused. Are people saying that the universe wouldn’t exist if people didn’t percieve it?!
I assure you the universe did quite well for 10 bil yrs+ before hominids came around. Just because math and language are symbolic representations of perceptions doesn’t mean they don’t actually refer to real things. When I use the word “cat” i am refering to things that actually exist. When I use the proper name “Zoe” I am reffering to an specific cat that does exist and is in fact yowling for food at this moment. (Not that the Eric Cartman of cats is going to get any.)
I am aware of, and agree with, some of the empiricist cautions about confusing our perceptions with some sort of ultimate reality.
But to claim that just because we use math and language, objective reality doesn’t exist at all seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least.