Related papers: And the math will set you free
Mathematics is an essential element of physics problem solving, but experts often fail to appreciate exactly how they use it. Math may be the language of science, but math-in-physics is a distinct dialect of that language. Physicists tend…
Many have wondered how mathematics, which appears to be the result of both human creativity and human discovery, can possibly exhibit the degree of success and seemingly-universal applicability to quantifying the physical world as…
The purpose of this essay is to bring out the unique role of Mathematics in providing a base to the diverse sciences which conform to its rigid structure. Of these the physical and economic sciences are so intimately linked with…
There is no mysterious link between mathematics and physics, because both of them are human inventions designed to study the world.
The mathematical universe discussed here gives models of possible structures our physical universe can have.
A major question in philosophy of science involves the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics. Why should mathematics, created or discovered, with nothing empirical in mind be so perfectly suited to describe the laws of the…
The nature of the existence, revealed through Human cognitive system, has been evolving since the development of the languages. Part of such revelations were the geometrical forms and the numbers, whose beauty and order, wondrous and…
The world of mathematics is often considered abstract, with its symbols, concepts, and topics appearing unrelated to physical objects. However, it is important to recognize that the development of mathematics is fundamentally influenced by…
In this essay, I argue that mathematics is a natural science---just like physics, chemistry, or biology---and that this can explain the alleged "unreasonable" effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences. The main challenge for…
This essay considers the special character of mathematical reasoning, and draws on observations from interactive theorem proving and the history of mathematics to clarify the nature of formal and informal mathematical language. It proposes…
Being mathematics a natural language to Mankind and to physics, it must be constantly adapted to our necessities and our natural perception. Then, mathematical concepts are not absolute to reality. Although mathematical theories are…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
Mathematics and its relation to the physical universe have been the topic of speculation since the days of Pythagoras. Several different views of the nature of mathematics have been considered: Realism - mathematics exists and is…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…
"Is math useful?" might sound as a trick question. And it is. Of course math is useful, we live in a data-filled world and every aspect of life is totally entwined with math applications, both trivial and subtle applications, of both basic…
We state the defining characteristic of mathematics as a type of symmetry where one can change the connotation of a mathematical statement in a certain way when the statement's truth value remains the same. This view of mathematics as…
Courses in mathematical methods for physics students are not known for including too much in the way of mathematical rigour and, in some ways, understandably so. However, the conditions under which some quite commonly used mathematical…
Some aspects of the physical nature of language are discussed. In particular, physical models of language must exist that are efficiently implementable. The existence requirement is essential because without physical models no communication…
It goes without saying that we are stuck with the universe we have. Nevertheless, we would like to go beyond simply describing our observed universe, and try to understand why it is that way rather than some other way. Physicists and…
Mathematics is one of the ways our species makes sense of this world and I believe that it is inherent in our thinking machinery. The mathematics we do in turn is dependent on the way we view our universe and ourselves. Lakoff and Nunez…