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> As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". I think that is not so much subsuming mathem
by FabHK 6y ago
> As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap".
I think that is not so much subsuming mathematics under physics as a cheeky way of avowing mathematical Platonism, where eternal mathematical truths reside in some Platonic realm of ideas and wait to be discovered (not invented or proven) by mathematicians.
- enriquto 6y agoYou can read the whole text that starts with that quote here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html As you say, it is written in a playful and cheeky manner, but it is just a rhetorical device; the meaning is certainly very deep. Even deeper and longer, but in a similar spirit, you have this text: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/Polymath.pdf http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/Polymath.pdf It starts with a famous quote, replicating Caesar's gallic war: All mathematics is divided into three parts: cryptography (paid for by CIA, KGB and the like), hydrodynamics (supported by manufacturers of atomic submarines) and celestial mechanics (financed by military and other institutions dealing with missiles, such as NASA).