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This should send a strong message to the scientists who are more passionate about elegant and beauty of mathematics and think that nature is written in mathemat

This should send a strong message to the scientists who are more passionate about elegant and beauty of mathematics and think that nature is written in mathematics and using mathematics only they can figure out natures secret. I know this has worked couple of times in past where a mathematical theory predicted existence of some entity or phenomena and then it was found to be true through experiments BUT that doesn't mean this trick will always work coz we try to understand nature using the tool of mathematics and nature doesn't give a crap about what we use to understand it.

deleted 10y ago
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aleksei 10y ago
Mathematics has also been used extensively to correctly model experimental observations. But what would you propose instead of mathematics?
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "But what would you propose instead of mathematics?" It's not that we shouldn't use math, but I suggest that when using Math we are predisposed to want clean, simple equations that explain everything.
  - Jach 10y ago
    Maxwell's equations can be written as one equation with geometric algebra, □A =J/(c є0) If the math comes out ugly we can just macro our way to prettier math and stick complicated things behind simple looking symbols. I don't think this is a predisposition in the initial search as much as aesthetics on making the form of work pleasant regardless of what you start with. But then, maybe it's even more than aesthetics, truth and reality seem to have an (unreasonable?) simplicity to them, so maybe there's objective beauty in simplicity; I don't see the point in intentionally seeking out ugly formalisms for ugly's sake especially when we've had so much success with simple and elegant.
  - chriswarbo 10y ago
    I think it's mostly a matter of Occam's Razor, Kolmogorov Complexity, the pigeonhole principle, etc. There aren't many clean, simple equations (relatively speaking), compared to long, ugly ones. Each time you make an equation longer, you have a huge variety of choices for the new bits; if we take "ugliness" to include things like asymmetry, arbitrary constants, lack of relationships between the parts, etc. then there are more ugly equations than beautiful ones. It's more practical to look for simple, pretty laws since there are far fewer of them to try. Once we've exhausted them, we can try making things a little uglier, and seeing if that works; and keep incrementing. After all, if you have enough epicycles you can explain any motion you like (since you're basically taking a fourier transform)
- ankurdhama 10y ago
  I am not against mathematics. It is the most powerful representation tool mankind has ever developed. What I feel weird about is that idea that we can come up with few simple and so called fundamental equations that can explain all of the universe. I think this idea is more like the axioms idea in mathematics i.e a set of basic truths from which every other possible truth can be discovered through inference. It feels like getting infatuated with a tool rather than focusing on the problems.
MawNicker 10y ago
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences is an excellent paper: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm... Also these quotes are interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences#Related_quotations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
- ankurdhama 10y ago
  Here are the counter arguments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreasonable_ineffectiveness_of_mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreasonable_ineffectiveness_o...
GnarfGnarf 10y ago
Maybe mathematics doesn't really predict the Universe. Maybe mathematics simply extends and reiterates within our mental models. Where is the math that predicted Dark Matter and Dark Energy?
- disconcision 10y ago
  Not necessarily saying you're wrong, but: Dark Energy: http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/de-did_einstein_predict.php http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/de-did_...
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
My understanding is that math doesn't predict anything. What actually happens is that a few hundred PhD candidates every year try and extrapolate from current data to viable new models - of which there are many. Once in a while someone gets lucky and makes a guess that happens to match experimental reality. But it's more like a lottery than a demonstration of the predictive power of maths. They get a career and possibly a Nobel prize, and all the many, many people who made equally plausible predictions that happened not to match experimental reality are quietly forgotten. Game changers like Einstein and Newton turn up occasionally, but they're very rare. We're desperately in need of one now, but the current academic system would probably exclude someone like Einstein. ("Works in a patent office" won't get you into Nature.) The problem now is it's getting harder and more expensive to test new possibilities. The Standard Model is obviously incomplete, SUSY doesn't seem to be working out, there are a lot of loose ends, but it's hard to sell funding bodies on bigger accelerator designs if there's no serious prospect of finding new stuff.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  > Game changers like Einstein and Newton Great examples you got, because those two did very little of the "here's a theory, let's see what it can explain" the GP is taking about, and focused basically on "here's some weird data, let's get a theory for explaining it".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aleksei 10y ago

Mathematics has also been used extensively to correctly model experimental observations. But what would you propose instead of mathematics?

jomamaxx 10y ago
"But what would you propose instead of mathematics?" It's not that we shouldn't use math, but I suggest that when using Math we are predisposed to want clean, simple equations that explain everything.
- Jach 10y ago
  Maxwell's equations can be written as one equation with geometric algebra, □A =J/(c є0) If the math comes out ugly we can just macro our way to prettier math and stick complicated things behind simple looking symbols. I don't think this is a predisposition in the initial search as much as aesthetics on making the form of work pleasant regardless of what you start with. But then, maybe it's even more than aesthetics, truth and reality seem to have an (unreasonable?) simplicity to them, so maybe there's objective beauty in simplicity; I don't see the point in intentionally seeking out ugly formalisms for ugly's sake especially when we've had so much success with simple and elegant.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  I think it's mostly a matter of Occam's Razor, Kolmogorov Complexity, the pigeonhole principle, etc. There aren't many clean, simple equations (relatively speaking), compared to long, ugly ones. Each time you make an equation longer, you have a huge variety of choices for the new bits; if we take "ugliness" to include things like asymmetry, arbitrary constants, lack of relationships between the parts, etc. then there are more ugly equations than beautiful ones. It's more practical to look for simple, pretty laws since there are far fewer of them to try. Once we've exhausted them, we can try making things a little uglier, and seeing if that works; and keep incrementing. After all, if you have enough epicycles you can explain any motion you like (since you're basically taking a fourier transform)
ankurdhama 10y ago
I am not against mathematics. It is the most powerful representation tool mankind has ever developed. What I feel weird about is that idea that we can come up with few simple and so called fundamental equations that can explain all of the universe. I think this idea is more like the axioms idea in mathematics i.e a set of basic truths from which every other possible truth can be discovered through inference. It feels like getting infatuated with a tool rather than focusing on the problems.

MawNicker 10y ago

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences is an excellent paper: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm... Also these quotes are interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences#Related_quotations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...

ankurdhama 10y ago
Here are the counter arguments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreasonable_ineffectiveness_of_mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreasonable_ineffectiveness_o...

GnarfGnarf 10y ago

Maybe mathematics doesn't really predict the Universe. Maybe mathematics simply extends and reiterates within our mental models. Where is the math that predicted Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

disconcision 10y ago
Not necessarily saying you're wrong, but: Dark Energy: http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/de-did_einstein_predict.php http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/de-did_...

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

My understanding is that math doesn't predict anything. What actually happens is that a few hundred PhD candidates every year try and extrapolate from current data to viable new models - of which there are many. Once in a while someone gets lucky and makes a guess that happens to match experimental reality. But it's more like a lottery than a demonstration of the predictive power of maths. They get a career and possibly a Nobel prize, and all the many, many people who made equally plausible predictions that happened not to match experimental reality are quietly forgotten. Game changers like Einstein and Newton turn up occasionally, but they're very rare. We're desperately in need of one now, but the current academic system would probably exclude someone like Einstein. ("Works in a patent office" won't get you into Nature.) The problem now is it's getting harder and more expensive to test new possibilities. The Standard Model is obviously incomplete, SUSY doesn't seem to be working out, there are a lot of loose ends, but it's hard to sell funding bodies on bigger accelerator designs if there's no serious prospect of finding new stuff.

marcosdumay 10y ago
> Game changers like Einstein and Newton Great examples you got, because those two did very little of the "here's a theory, let's see what it can explain" the GP is taking about, and focused basically on "here's some weird data, let's get a theory for explaining it".