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In my experience, it's a moving goal post. Physicists usually start off with the goal of explaining certain natural phenomena. Over the decades the specific par

by ssivark 10y ago

In my experience, it's a moving goal post. Physicists usually start off with the goal of explaining certain natural phenomena. Over the decades the specific parts of math this entails has evolved rapidly, as new phenomena become novel. One might naively think that only "some" parts of math are useful for physics, but over the last 2-3 decades, many connections between physics and math have been discovered, that has brought the communities closer together, reversing the trend in the middle of the 20th century. For a very interesting take on the interplay between physics and math, by one of the masters of math/physics, see [1]. [1]: http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html To quote an excerpt from Arnold's talk: " Mathematics is a part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap. "

Koshkin 10y ago
> Mathematics is a part of physics Somehow I have a strong feeling it's the other way around. When trying to really understand the ways of Nature, you end up having to do a lot of calculations. Then you get quickly drawn into the depths of very complicated mathematics. Finally, you realize that there is nothing in (theoretical) physics that is not mathematics. Historically, much of mathematics evolved in connection with physics, but this fact does not change anything.
- ianai 10y ago
  As a mathematician myself I'm inclined to say "everything's applied math", but it's really not the case. Physics studies and seeks after the basic laws that govern the universe. Physicists find mathematics very useful in these pursuits. But ultimately physics studies the universe and employs mathematics thusly. In theory, physicists could use other tools than math if those other tools were as useful or (preferably) more useful. I like to think of mathematics as the study of logical systems. That's how you can have mathematicians that specialize in biology, physics, music, and so on.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  The way I look at it is this: mathematics is just formalized perfect reasoning. Its job is to get you from a thing you assume to be true, through steps of formal inference, to a new thing that you can be sure is true if the original assumption holds. You then keep on chaining this, so from a small set assumptions you enumerate all the facts that follow from them. Physics is a field of study that does experiments to identify what things are fact in our universe, and then tries to pick such a subset of math that best fits the observed data. If further experimental results deviate from what the chosen mathematical model predicts, physicists will pick a different model, up until the maths align perfectly with what they see. The reason physicists use math is thus simply because alternative to math is hand-waving and guessing, and physics is a serious field.

by ssivark 10y ago

Koshkin 10y ago

> Mathematics is a part of physics Somehow I have a strong feeling it's the other way around. When trying to really understand the ways of Nature, you end up having to do a lot of calculations. Then you get quickly drawn into the depths of very complicated mathematics. Finally, you realize that there is nothing in (theoretical) physics that is not mathematics. Historically, much of mathematics evolved in connection with physics, but this fact does not change anything.

ianai 10y ago
As a mathematician myself I'm inclined to say "everything's applied math", but it's really not the case. Physics studies and seeks after the basic laws that govern the universe. Physicists find mathematics very useful in these pursuits. But ultimately physics studies the universe and employs mathematics thusly. In theory, physicists could use other tools than math if those other tools were as useful or (preferably) more useful. I like to think of mathematics as the study of logical systems. That's how you can have mathematicians that specialize in biology, physics, music, and so on.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
The way I look at it is this: mathematics is just formalized perfect reasoning. Its job is to get you from a thing you assume to be true, through steps of formal inference, to a new thing that you can be sure is true if the original assumption holds. You then keep on chaining this, so from a small set assumptions you enumerate all the facts that follow from them. Physics is a field of study that does experiments to identify what things are fact in our universe, and then tries to pick such a subset of math that best fits the observed data. If further experimental results deviate from what the chosen mathematical model predicts, physicists will pick a different model, up until the maths align perfectly with what they see. The reason physicists use math is thus simply because alternative to math is hand-waving and guessing, and physics is a serious field.