Photi
Governor
Does anyone have anything cool or intellectual to say about math? I was once pretty good at math up until and including pre-calculus, but then my interests pulled me into the social sciences and I never studied any advanced math after that.
I once took a class entitled "Physics for Social Science Majors." We learned about symmetry, relativity, time and the atom and other interesting topics, but we did so without the use of complex equations, the class was more based on the principles of it all.
Can math be discussed in this way? Math not so much as technique and numbers, but more in terms of a conceptual discussion? I guess I am intending the thread to be open ended, discuss any topic in math not so much with numbers but with words.
For example, a question I have: People talk about Leibniz and Newton inventing calculus, but I wonder, is that really correct? Did they invent calculus, or is calculus a part of nature? Maybe what they invented is merely the symbolic representation of that nature in a comprehensible and useful way? Or, in other words, is math real in the same sense that gravity and light are real? Equations are made to describe energy, mass and gravity and all the other phenomena of the universe, but is this all there is to math, a symbolic expression of natural laws that in their own essence have nothing to do with math? Is there a deeper more esoteric essence to math, an essence that whatever it is contributes to the laws that the universe displays? Why does math work? Is the decimal system for our own convenience, or is there something natural about ten digits? Could a number system be devised based off pi, where pi is a whole number? If so, would this make advanced mathematics any easier or less ambiguous? e the natural number, what's so natural about that number as opposed to any other number?
Don't limit yourselves to those questions, they're there just to get things rolling.
I once took a class entitled "Physics for Social Science Majors." We learned about symmetry, relativity, time and the atom and other interesting topics, but we did so without the use of complex equations, the class was more based on the principles of it all.
Can math be discussed in this way? Math not so much as technique and numbers, but more in terms of a conceptual discussion? I guess I am intending the thread to be open ended, discuss any topic in math not so much with numbers but with words.
For example, a question I have: People talk about Leibniz and Newton inventing calculus, but I wonder, is that really correct? Did they invent calculus, or is calculus a part of nature? Maybe what they invented is merely the symbolic representation of that nature in a comprehensible and useful way? Or, in other words, is math real in the same sense that gravity and light are real? Equations are made to describe energy, mass and gravity and all the other phenomena of the universe, but is this all there is to math, a symbolic expression of natural laws that in their own essence have nothing to do with math? Is there a deeper more esoteric essence to math, an essence that whatever it is contributes to the laws that the universe displays? Why does math work? Is the decimal system for our own convenience, or is there something natural about ten digits? Could a number system be devised based off pi, where pi is a whole number? If so, would this make advanced mathematics any easier or less ambiguous? e the natural number, what's so natural about that number as opposed to any other number?
Don't limit yourselves to those questions, they're there just to get things rolling.