Re: [math-fun] Is mathematical truth "real" ?
I've come to really hate Nova (including The Great Math Mystery). Because they claim to be about science, but Nova very rarely has any significant amount of science; it's 98% technology. I don't have anything against technology (depending on the specifics). But I totally hate the almost complete absence of science. As for the math program that Mike B. liked — Indeed it has a lot of whiz-bang computer graphics. Unfortunately, it *settles* for *just* having lots of eye candy but conveys almost no actual understanding of anything. Which is also typical of most of the Brian Greene physics programs that have been on Nova as well. —Dan
From: Mike Beeler <mikebeeler2@gmail.com>
This was the subject of a PBS Nova episode, “The Great Math Mystery”, originally aired 4/15/2015 and rebroadcast last Wednesday 3/28/2018. It mentions Fibonacci spirals, gravitation, Maxwell’s equations, prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson, etc. as evidence that math is real. fMRI scans of people doing math problems, and experiments showing various animals have an ability to distinguish “number” (more things here than there). Unlikely to convince an esteemed anyone, but a nice assembly of well known anecdotes, and good eye candy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html>
Questions like this tend to make me impatient, because it seems to me that when one person says, "it's obvious that math is real," and another "it's obvious that math is fiction", they must be disagreeing on the definition of one of the terms. Most likely, they are tacitly differing over what it means to say "X is real". It is likely that they would also lock horns over whether liberty, altruism, evil, or frustration are "real". The discussion isn't fruitful unless we settle in advance what we mean by "reality" when applied to abstract contexts. Most likely when we say "real", we actually mean one of a half-dozen vaguely-related predicates, some of which apply to mathematical truth, and some of which don't. Only after we get that definitional morass cleared up will we actually reach issues specific to mathematics. Then we will hit another problem, that of defining what math itself is. On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 1:41 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
I've come to really hate Nova (including The Great Math Mystery).
Because they claim to be about science, but Nova very rarely has any significant amount of science; it's 98% technology. I don't have anything against technology (depending on the specifics). But I totally hate the almost complete absence of science.
As for the math program that Mike B. liked — Indeed it has a lot of whiz-bang computer graphics. Unfortunately, it *settles* for *just* having lots of eye candy but conveys almost no actual understanding of anything. Which is also typical of most of the Brian Greene physics programs that have been on Nova as well.
—Dan
From: Mike Beeler <mikebeeler2@gmail.com>
This was the subject of a PBS Nova episode, “The Great Math Mystery”, originally aired 4/15/2015 and rebroadcast last Wednesday 3/28/2018. It mentions Fibonacci spirals, gravitation, Maxwell’s equations, prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson, etc. as evidence that math is real. fMRI scans of people doing math problems, and experiments showing various animals have an ability to distinguish “number” (more things here than there). Unlikely to convince an esteemed anyone, but a nice assembly of well known anecdotes, and good eye candy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html>
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Dealing with "reality" is important for more than math and quantum physics. In his book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", Yuval Noah Harari makes the conjecture that the main difference between humans and other animals is the ability to deal with abstract concepts. This allows us to work together towards an imagined goal and form cognitively-based groups. Interesting conjecture since tools, language, and even arithmetic are shared with animals. --R On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 2:12 PM, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
Questions like this tend to make me impatient, because it seems to me that when one person says, "it's obvious that math is real," and another "it's obvious that math is fiction", they must be disagreeing on the definition of one of the terms. Most likely, they are tacitly differing over what it means to say "X is real". It is likely that they would also lock horns over whether liberty, altruism, evil, or frustration are "real". The discussion isn't fruitful unless we settle in advance what we mean by "reality" when applied to abstract contexts. Most likely when we say "real", we actually mean one of a half-dozen vaguely-related predicates, some of which apply to mathematical truth, and some of which don't.
Only after we get that definitional morass cleared up will we actually reach issues specific to mathematics. Then we will hit another problem, that of defining what math itself is.
On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 1:41 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
I've come to really hate Nova (including The Great Math Mystery).
Because they claim to be about science, but Nova very rarely has any significant amount of science; it's 98% technology. I don't have anything against technology (depending on the specifics). But I totally hate the almost complete absence of science.
As for the math program that Mike B. liked — Indeed it has a lot of whiz-bang computer graphics. Unfortunately, it *settles* for *just* having lots of eye candy but conveys almost no actual understanding of anything. Which is also typical of most of the Brian Greene physics programs that have been on Nova as well.
—Dan
From: Mike Beeler <mikebeeler2@gmail.com>
This was the subject of a PBS Nova episode, “The Great Math Mystery”, originally aired 4/15/2015 and rebroadcast last Wednesday 3/28/2018. It mentions Fibonacci spirals, gravitation, Maxwell’s equations, prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson, etc. as evidence that math is real. fMRI scans of people doing math problems, and experiments showing various animals have an ability to distinguish “number” (more things here than there). Unlikely to convince an esteemed anyone, but a nice assembly of well known anecdotes, and good eye candy.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html < http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html>
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participants (3)
-
Allan Wechsler -
Dan Asimov -
Richard Howard