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I may be in the wrong here, but afaik mathematics has not "re-invented" itself after WW2, to take it a step further, I fail to see how we're doing different mat

I may be in the wrong here, but afaik mathematics has not "re-invented" itself after WW2, to take it a step further, I fail to see how we're doing different mathematics compared to what Newton and Leibniz have put on the table. Even if we look at the "greatest" post-WW2 maths result, Fermat's Theory, I don't see any new reality-related insights that it has brought us, and I'll go another step further and I say that even if we were to someday prove the Riemann hypothesis I don't see how it would fundamentally bring new insights regarding "reality"/the physical world. If anything, I dare say that in a certain way maths has tainted the physical world for us, has made us believe that in the same way in which mathematics is "homogeneous" then the physical world is too, if maths has numbers and "units" and if (1002 - 1000) = (2002 - 2000) then it also means that in the physical world we have homogenous "stuff". This is why physics has started using mystical-like language like "elementary particles" which are seen as the "foundation of the physical world", with the implicit premise (if I'm wrong here, please correct me) that given a certain "elementary particle" (let's say a boson) then the boson close to it or the boson situated at the other "side" of the Universe are pretty much the same thing, almost identical, the same way as the mathematical difference I mentioned above is the same, or how two parallel lines are "the same". Basically almost all the theoretical physicists have become Platonists by embracing mathematics no-questions-asked, when in fact they should have remained closer to Hume. And when reality hits them in the face pretty hard they resort to even more mysticism by "inventing" concepts like dark energy and the like. Later edit: I see that that "homogenous reality" theory even has a name, Cosmological principle [1], and as a close-enough Hume follower Karl Popper was quick to dismiss it. By reading it you have to wonder what those physicists had in mind when they wrote it down: > Although the universe is inhomogeneous at smaller scales, it is statistically homogeneous on scales larger than 250 million light years. like, why 250 million is ok and 240 million light years is not ok? To say nothing of the fact that the "infinitely small" (the mystical-like elementary particles I mentioned above) are ignored completely from this discussion, they're also probably seen as "statistically the same". As I said, this "statistical sameness" has made us believe that more than half of the Universe we know of (68%, to quote Wikipedia) is made out of the mother of all mystical thingies, "dark energy". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

Koshkin 7y ago
First off, mathematics did actually reinvent itself in the late 1940s, with the discovery of Category Theory, which, despite being sometimes called “abstract nonsense”, has found its way into theoretical physics. Further, there is nothing mystical at all in any of the concepts of the modern physics - not more anyway than in the concept of, say, the atom. It is actually math that should be credited with the removal of the shroud of mysticism perceived by some - perhaps even many - of the uninitiated. (Physics is not an exception here - some people still look at a working computer as a miracle, for example.) And the homogeneity at the scales at which there’s just too many things to allow for much diversity should, too, be seen as one of the manifestation of the absence of any true mystery in the universe.
- goatlover 7y ago
  > there is nothing mystical at all in any of the concepts of the modern physics Nothing mystical, but there certainly are deep questions, which is why we have the various interpretations of QM.

Koshkin 7y ago

First off, mathematics did actually reinvent itself in the late 1940s, with the discovery of Category Theory, which, despite being sometimes called “abstract nonsense”, has found its way into theoretical physics. Further, there is nothing mystical at all in any of the concepts of the modern physics - not more anyway than in the concept of, say, the atom. It is actually math that should be credited with the removal of the shroud of mysticism perceived by some - perhaps even many - of the uninitiated. (Physics is not an exception here - some people still look at a working computer as a miracle, for example.) And the homogeneity at the scales at which there’s just too many things to allow for much diversity should, too, be seen as one of the manifestation of the absence of any true mystery in the universe.

goatlover 7y ago
> there is nothing mystical at all in any of the concepts of the modern physics Nothing mystical, but there certainly are deep questions, which is why we have the various interpretations of QM.