Is mathematics an effective way to describe the world?

Phys.Org ^ | 3 SEP 2013 | Lisa Zyga

[onedoug]

Mathematics has been called the language of the universe. Scientists and engineers often speak of the elegance of mathematics when describing physical reality, citing examples such as π, E=mc2, and even something as simple as using abstract integers to count real-world objects. Yet while these examples demonstrate how useful math can be for us, does it mean that the physical world naturally follows the rules of mathematics as its "mother tongue," and that this mathematics has its own existence that is out there waiting to be discovered? This point of view on the nature of the relationship between mathematics and the physical world is called Platonism, but not everyone agrees with it.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mathematics-effective-world.html#jCp

[marsh2]

No, music is - that is mathematics + the emotion - the experiential world as seen through the prism of the ego

[spudville]

Mathematics did not build anything. Math is just a tool used by people to create. Math has always existed since creation. Man only discovered it. Just as fractals have always existed. Our technology and abilities to understand have only recently discovered them. Was it Bill Gates who said that DNA contains a software program more complex than anything man has ever done. Within DNA is a code, a language. Intelligence does not spring from nothing nothingness.It is created.

[onedoug]

I think so.

Great posts, lyby and All. Thanks so much!

s, ping....

[catnipman]

Uh, if we didn’t have any of the mathematics used to describe the world today, the human population of the world would be a few million who live in caves and eat bugs.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

It is - unfortunately most Americans have had understanding of that language beat out of them by their commie school system, so we are better off sticking with a language that people here understand - perhaps the language used for text messages and twitter.

[norwaypinesavage]

Many of the principles of mathematics contain “singularities”, points of infinity and points where something compresses into nothing. Neither of these have been found in the real world. It’s hard for me to consider that mathematics can completely describe the real world using conditions that don’t exist.

[onedoug]

As if anything could be said to exist using conditions that don’t.

Quantum theory, insofar as it's understood - which is considerably given our uses of subatomic physics, nevertheless does throw up a decided cloudiness to a complete understanding of how things operate at that scale. A lot of it we may never know. It seems to me that it invites statements like, "It may have happened, or not" both of which outcomes are entirely probabilistic, even such counterintuitive notions that both outcomes that were possible actually occurred in separate universes.

I mentioned fundamental constants in my first post. These are repeatable across the universe as far as we can tell. How they were established to such a fine tuning that given their slightest variations, we wouldn't be here considering them makes me fee as though they were intelligently established.

Thanks be to God.