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To: Alamo-Girl
I’d love to hear any arguments for why mathematics should not be given a higher seat in our body of knowledge than science!

There are limits, math theorems that cannot be proved within math. Ultimately we cannot know.

23 posted on 03/16/2005 10:39:16 AM PST by RightWhale (Please correct if cosmic balance requires.)
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To: RightWhale; betty boop
Thank you so much for your reply!

There are limits, math theorems that cannot be proved within math. Ultimately we cannot know.

Indeed.

Seems like every discipline has things which we can know, things which we do not yet know, and things which we can never know.

Concerning the unknowable - in mathematics, we have Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. In physics, we have Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. And in the historical sciences - evolution, archeology, anthropology, Egyptology - we have an incomplete record of evidence.

To me, all of these are cautions which attach to the value of evidence and/or work product - but not to the value of the discipline itself.

25 posted on 03/16/2005 11:21:14 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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