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To say that mathematics only serves physics, seems wrong. Mathematics provides a basis and guarantees for every science. Physics, Biology, Computer Science... n

by mitko 17y ago

To say that mathematics only serves physics, seems wrong. Mathematics provides a basis and guarantees for every science. Physics, Biology, Computer Science... name it- I bet it uses tons of mathematics to justify its models. In my opinion the beauty of the mathematics is that if you prove something- it is TRUE, or your assumptions are wrong.

TriinT 17y ago
Of course Math serves many fields, but have you ever found a research paper that applied Math to, say, Biology and didn't use a bit too much hand-waving? Of all fields of application of mathematical ideas, Physics has been (by far) the most successful. Wigner wrote all about it.
- klipt 17y ago
  For biology you need a particular branch of math: statistics. Of course the same is true of physics when you look at it on a small enough scale. With the small datasets some biologists work with, you might not get a useful result, but at least you can quantify how unuseful it is!
eugenejen 17y ago
Unfortunately this is not the origin of the modern European mathematics. The math was tightly related to the field of mathematical physics until early 20 century. And the cause of split of physics and mathematics is Bourbaki's movement for pure math, which unfortunately leading the movement of pedagogical "new math" later that make all school children hating math. The job of old mathematicians is not only to prove theorem, but also to design tools to solve physics problems. V.I. Arnold was trying to bring this back together again. It is the same as we design algorithms for real world problems.
- TriinT 17y ago
  I keep thinking of how V.I. Arnold managed to teach group theory to Moscow schoolchildren in the 1960s. I also wonder why Landau & Lipschitz are such wonderful books. There's something special in the Russian way of teaching Math / Physics, I guess.
  - eugenejen 17y ago
    I don't know. Even Komolgorov's "Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning" is pretty easy to read. My theory is that instead of teaching the abstract definition and proofs for group like general college math professors, V.I. Arnold might start lectures from some games/problems in daily life that we can apply group theory on to kids. (Of course those kids maybe gifted in math already) then from the special concrete case as basis, he then showed students the abstract stuffs behind it.
derefr 17y ago
I think, the way it was phrased, Physics "is" every science. That is, every other science can be expressed purely in terms of (lots and lots and lots of very, very tedious) physics, similar to the way that every computer program can be expressed in terms of the simplest possible Turing machine. To put it in that perspective, mathematics must serve empirical investigation into reality.

by mitko 17y ago

TriinT 17y ago

Of course Math serves many fields, but have you ever found a research paper that applied Math to, say, Biology and didn't use a bit too much hand-waving? Of all fields of application of mathematical ideas, Physics has been (by far) the most successful. Wigner wrote all about it.

klipt 17y ago
For biology you need a particular branch of math: statistics. Of course the same is true of physics when you look at it on a small enough scale. With the small datasets some biologists work with, you might not get a useful result, but at least you can quantify how unuseful it is!

eugenejen 17y ago

Unfortunately this is not the origin of the modern European mathematics. The math was tightly related to the field of mathematical physics until early 20 century. And the cause of split of physics and mathematics is Bourbaki's movement for pure math, which unfortunately leading the movement of pedagogical "new math" later that make all school children hating math. The job of old mathematicians is not only to prove theorem, but also to design tools to solve physics problems. V.I. Arnold was trying to bring this back together again. It is the same as we design algorithms for real world problems.

TriinT 17y ago
I keep thinking of how V.I. Arnold managed to teach group theory to Moscow schoolchildren in the 1960s. I also wonder why Landau & Lipschitz are such wonderful books. There's something special in the Russian way of teaching Math / Physics, I guess.
- eugenejen 17y ago
  I don't know. Even Komolgorov's "Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning" is pretty easy to read. My theory is that instead of teaching the abstract definition and proofs for group like general college math professors, V.I. Arnold might start lectures from some games/problems in daily life that we can apply group theory on to kids. (Of course those kids maybe gifted in math already) then from the special concrete case as basis, he then showed students the abstract stuffs behind it.

derefr 17y ago

I think, the way it was phrased, Physics "is" every science. That is, every other science can be expressed purely in terms of (lots and lots and lots of very, very tedious) physics, similar to the way that every computer program can be expressed in terms of the simplest possible Turing machine. To put it in that perspective, mathematics must serve empirical investigation into reality.