From: David (clarkd@rccconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Aug 10 2004 - 10:04:46 MDT
> I don't claim to know how or why it is so, but it seems obvious enough that
> our physical universe is a manifestation of that which we name
> "mathematics" - maybe even in the sense of our physical universe being a
> model which satisfies an axiomatic system, but I'm still studying
> mathematical logic so it's too early for me to speculate coherently about that.
Mathematics is a human construct that has some usefulness to the physical world because man designed it that way. The elegance of Mathematics is solely (in my humble judgment) a property of the way in which Math was invented. The universe is not Math but Math is just a human contrivance to help look at the universe by man. I make programs all the time that are "axiomatically" elegant and consistent and they also have some useful purpose in the real world but do my programs "manifest" the "universe"? I had a partner in a company I owned in the 1980's and my partner spent his adult life as a Mathematical professor and researcher at a University, in a branch of Mathematics called Lattice Theory. Over 500 full time researchers publish documents in this discipline around the world. He told me that there were currently no known applications or physical use for Lattice theory in the world! How does this correlate with reality and pure mathematics? Do you have arguments to support this assumption or should we believe things just because they seem "obvious"?
> Geddes credits the speculation that all is math and all math exists to
> Tegmark, Geddes didn't make it up himself. Nor did Tegmark devise it; if I
> recall correctly "all is math" goes back to Pythagoras, and I don't know
> who first speculated that everything exists.
Who cares who first postulated some particular idea? If you say you believe XYZ then you should have to support your belief. I am not impressed by the fact that someone who was quoted lived long ago. In fact, because they didn't have the benefit of all the knowledge that has been gained since, their opinions are probably worth less. Linus Pauling received 2 Nobel Prizes but that did not stop him from being totally wrong about massive vitamin C doses. I have no time to read and remember what everyone has ever written, and so I just put forward my arguments (some of which are mine and some might come from others) and I defend them regardless of their origin. Many times I think up new (to me) ideas and I am subsequently told someone thought of them before me. I feel much smarter having walked in such great shoes!
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