Math is weird

[forsythferret]

So now I'm studying engineering, which means I'm studying more advanced math, like linear algebra and differential equations. Which are hard, or at least Diff EQ is. But then, math is a game for the youngBut that's not the thing I'm noticing.  I'm noticing things where the different math I've learned mets and intersects, and works together.  And

Comments

[jokermage]

You are confusing math with science. While the two are linked, they are not the same. Math is axiom-based logic system. Science is a system for describing the universe based on observations and testing.

[forsythferret]

That's certainly possible, but math in its incarnation as something useful is created in and dependent on our three-dimensional universe. You could in theory create a mathematical logic set that's internally consistent where 2+2=5, and therefore wouldn't reflect the actual universe we inhabit (probably). Just as you can create a largely internally consistent narrative of a world that's not ours. Both subject to Godel's Incompleteness theorem.

But even at that, it's STILL fucking weird, limiting myself just to the mathematics used by various kinds of science.

But also as I've said, I'm reading the Atrocity Archives, by Charlie Stross, and that's helped put my brain in a weird place.

[the_s_guy]

I'm not surprised. Math started as a way to describe the physical world. Whatever else it has grown into along the way, it still has fingers firmly in the pie of rocks and sticks. This means that no matter what bit of mathematics you start out with, it can be linked to something in the real world, with sufficient time.

Almost by definition, some parts of math are going to have what we perceive as 'closer' links to reality than others. And every time we discover one of those areas where we can see the shorter path, we jump up and down and proclaim OMG Math/Reality OTP!

Of course, we don't do it for those areas where we can't find a short path, but those areas don't sell magazine articles :)

[forsythferret]

That's part of the point I was trying to make, that of course math has ties to reality, since it's made by us, living in reality. Which is why math works. But it's really strange sometimes to see things that represent reality fall out of seemingly arbitrary logic. Even though that logic, like everything else we do, has a base in reality, because that's the experiences we have to work with.

[moshchyk]

[forsythferret]