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Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 26, 2008 05:42 PM
from the plato-says-yeah-but dept.
from the plato-says-yeah-but dept.
An anonymous reader points out an article up at Science News on a question that, remarkably, is still being debated after a few thousand years: is mathematics discovered, or is it invented? Those who answer "discovered" are the intellectual descendants of Plato; their number includes Roger Penrose. The article notes that one difficulty with the Platonic view: if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state. The European Mathematical Society recently devoted space to the debate. One of the papers, Let Platonism die, can be found on page 24 of this PDF. The author believes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science."
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Firehose:Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented? by Anonymous Coward
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Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
When faced with an awkward question, logical positivism [wikipedia.org] asks: what would the answer tell me about the future?
Suppose you had a definitive, 100% guaranteed answer to the "discovered vs invented" question. What would it allow you to do that you couldn't do before? What could you predict? What would you gain?
Nothing, nothing and nothing.
It's meaningless; merely a matter of perception, wordplay and people having too much time on their hands.
Oh, and the correct answer is "discovered".
Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the correct answer is "both."
The relationships and observations that we use mathematics to model are discovered. They are out there, we discover them, and then we model them. That should be obvious to all but the most die-hard of idealists.
The language that we use to do this modeling is invented. It is also refined (i.e. slightly reinvented) over time to better fit our discoveries. That, too, should be obvious to all but the most die-hard of determinists.
I know, this answer isn't very deep, but in my opinion the question isn't nearly as deep as it is being made out to be.
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, I am too drunk to type. I have one eye closed as I type.... so you win
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends what you mean by "exists". For example, mathematical concepts are not observable (which is the condition for existence in an empirical framework), but physical systems can be observed which implement the concept. One can observe one apple or one galaxy, but one cannot observe the number one.
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
truth is discovered
truthiness is invented
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Math is the symbolism used to describe the universe. Physical reality does not need symbols or tools or sentience to function, we however need math to describe the functions of the universe in precise detail. Math is a tool and so is an invented thing where the ideas have come from observing the world around us, just like a knife or velcro are tools that where invented based off of ideas gleaned from observations of the world around us.
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the correct answer is "both."
No, I think the correct answer is, "What are you asking?"
The problem with questions like this is that it isn't clear what's in the mind of the person asking the question. What do you mean by "invented" and what do you mean by "discovered"? What difference do you see between the two?
For example, some people will think that "invented" means "made up". So in that person's mind, if math is "invented", then it's based only on human thought, and not on real principles of the universe itself. Of course, this line of thought makes me want to ask what it would mean to be a "real principle", and what is the "universe itself" when detached from human conception, but I'll leave that aside.
The problem I see immediately with this concept of "invented" is that real inventions don't exist independently of the universe. For example, was the wheel "invented", or did someone discover that rolling a circularly shaped object requires less energy than dragging an equally massive object? Was gunpowder "invented", or did someone discover than mixing certain chemicals together and setting fire to them caused an explosion? Was the telephone "invented", or did someone discover that you could convert sounds into electrical signals and back again by using magnets?
All inventions are a discovery of sorts, which makes this whole question a bit nonsensical.
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Score +1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it's also amazing that the equation isn't 2.14332544988e=2.14332544988mc^2.
Yes, sorry, I'm being a smart-ass and it's not polite. But c^2 is just a constant.
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Other parts of math do resemble invention more than discovery. E.g., the definition of mole being the number of atoms of carbon 12 needed to make exactly 12g and the Coulomb, both of which are numbers that are arbitrarily assigned to fit in with the system of measurements that has been devised over the years. All of these constants could easily be multiplied by any non-integer value and the whole system would still work.
To answer the article's original question however, my answer would be: Who gives a toss? Math is useful. Whatever semantic definition we apply to the process by which we expand our mathematical capabilities has absolutely zero impact upon that expansion.
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No, mc^2 is exact for an object at rest (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose you had a definitive, 100% guaranteed answer to the "discovered vs invented" question. What would it allow you to do that you couldn't do before? What could you predict? What would you gain?
I tend to agree. I'm reminded of the Dutch computer scientist, Dijkstra, who said that ""The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." Some questions are just meaningless.
I think the thing to learn here is that language isn't reality, it merely describes reality.
Oh, and the correct answer is "discovered"
No, I think the correct answer is "Why are you asking the question?" There might be a more interesting (and perhaps answerable) question that underlies it.
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Re:Logical positivism to the rescue... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and the correct answer is "discovered"
No, I think the correct answer is "Why are you asking the question?" There might be a more interesting (and perhaps answerable) question that underlies it.
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Mathematics in the forms of human intuition (Score:5, Insightful)
I much prefer the Kantian approach, which, simplified, is that space and time are the forms of human intuition, and it is these forms of intuition that lead to us understanding things the way we do (spacially and temporally, whose relationships are mathematical). "Things in themselves" are unknowable, and can only be approached through some set of references, whether it be through the space and time we perceive, other possible ways time and space could work (non-Euclidian geometries?), or ways we can't even imagine. Unlike Plato's idea, which is that mathematics involves universal truths we discover, Kant's "Copernican turn" puts the subject as the one who projects mathematics onto everything it experiences. Arguably, this is the idea that has lead to the "modern era".
This makes mathematics the study of these forms of intuition, so unlike Plato's approach, we're not "discovering" universal ideas, but rather coming to understand the way we interpret the world (and by "we", I mean me, the beings who do science that makes sense to me, and probably most beings on earth whose methods of sensation resemble that of humans).
To answer the question of discovery or invention from this perspective, we can invent ways to do mathematics, but the relationships themselves are a discovery of the way we intuit anything we can sense.
I know this! (Score:5, Funny)
Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented? (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither. It is defined.
Only the integers (Score:5, Interesting)
Integers were discovered. Beyond that, it's human invention.
I used to do work on mechanical theorem proving, and spent quite a bit of time using the Boyer-Moore theorem prover [utexas.edu]. When you try to mechanize the process, it's clearer what is discovered (and can be found by search algorithms) and what is made up. Boyer-Moore theory builds up mathematics from something close to the Peano axioms. [wikipedia.org] But it's a purely constructive system. There are no quantifiers, only recursive functions. It's possible to start with a minimal set of definitions and build up number theory and set theory. The system is initialized with a few definitions, and, one at a time, theorems are fed in. Each theorem, once proved, can be used in other theorems. After a few hundred theorems, most of number theory is defined.
But you never get real numbers that way. Integer, yes. Fractions, yes. Floating point numbers, representation limits and all, yes. But no reals. Reals require additional axioms.
Axioms vs. theorems (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that the axioms don't exist until we create them. But once we create a set of axioms, then the results are an inevitable (if arduous) journey of discovery which might require clever inventions to reach the destination of mathematical knowledge.
Parallel (Score:5, Interesting)
What Erds and Feynman believed about this (Score:5, Informative)
Feynman also felt like coming up with a proof was more discovery than invention. He said that the proof felt like it was already there all along, raising the question of where "there" is.
Just reading about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a thought problem for you.
You have the following in your hand:
A one-cent piece from 1978
A one-cent piece from 1986
A one-cent piece from 2004
I could have said you have 3 cents. But there is no such thing as 3 cents. 3 cents is an idea, an abstraction. It is not a concrete thing in the real world.
So, despite all that we appear to discover about the world through mathematics, we cannot really say that math is "out there" somewhere waiting for our discovery. Rather, mathematics is our projection onto the universe. It it because of the shortcomings of our abstractions and models that our science must be continuously revised.
For example, Newton did not discover anything about the universe. He made observations and rationalized (projected?) an abstract model which works very similarly to the observations. It's repeatable and consistent, so we call it a theory.
But then along comes Einstein. He makes some new observations, some new hypothesis, and voila, a new theory. Even if you argue that Einstein, or anyone else for that matter, has made such discoveries through mathematical observation, that doesn't discount the fact that the observation in that case is made upon the abstraction of the universe, not the universe itself.
In summary, mathematics is a simulation of the universe. It's an abstraction. One we humans invent. The fact that our model is observable, predictable, and so on in no way justifies the position that we are discovering some thing which pre-existed. Here's a final analogy - a computer model can be created to simulate the design of a car. We can study, observe, made predictions, corrections, and so on with the model. Yet, despite how relevant those observations, predictions, corrections, and so on are to the real car, they are still NOT the real car. The model is our interpretation, our abstraction of the car. We invent it. We make it. We project our ideas about the car into it. We do not "discover" it. The model does not exist without us.
You've just reinvented Projectively Extended Reals (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It's neither (Score:5, Insightful)
So you invent/assume your choice of axioms, and everything else follows from them and can be discovered at leisure.
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