Related papers: Comments on a recent item by Yu I Manin
Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching ---…
Wigner's "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" in physics can be understood as a reflection of a deep and unexpected unity between the fundamental structures of mathematics and of physics. Some of the history of evidence for this is…
Wigner's famous and influential claim that mathematics is "unreasonably effective" in physics is founded on unreasonable assumptions about the nature of mathematics and its independence of physics. Here I argue that what is surprising is…
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 sketch of some of the fundamental notions related to the nature of knowledge is offered, with special focus on the role of mathematics and my own opinions. No single idea exposed here is entirely original; indeed, this topic has been…
Eugene Wigner's much-discussed notion of the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" as applied to describing the physics of empirical reality is simultaneously both trivial and profound. After all, the relevant mathematics was (in the…
Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
I describe some deep-seated problems in higher mathematical education, and give some ideas for their solution -- I advocate a move away from the traditional introduction of mathematics through calculus, and towards computation and discrete…
"Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers…
The concept of infinity took centuries to achieve recognized status in the field of mathematics, despite the fact that it was implicitly present in nearly all mathematical endeavors. Here I explore the idea that a similar development might…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
Recent developments in elementary quantum mechanics have seen a number of extraordinary claims regarding quantum behaviour, and even questioning internal consistency of the theory. These are, we argue, different disguises of what Feynman…
In the seminal essay, "On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences," physicist Eugene Wigner poses a fundamental philosophical question concerning the relationship between a physical system and our capacity to…
Many physicists, following Einstein, believe that the ultimate aim of theoretical physics is to find a unified theory of all interactions which would not depend on any free dimensionless constant, i.e., a dimensionless constant that is only…
Mathematicians occasionally discover interesting truths even when they are playing with mathematical ideas with no thoughts about possible consequences of their actions. This paper describes two specific instances of this phenomenon. The…
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…
I discuss some general aspects of the creation, interpretation, and reception of mathematics as a part of civilization and culture.
We claim that human mathematics is only a limited part of the consequences of the chosen basic axioms. Properly human mathematics varies with time but appears to have universal features which we try to analyze. In particular the functioning…
{\bf Abstract.} The present article is an essay about mathematical intuition and Artificial intelligence (A.I.), followed by a guided excursion to a well-known open problem. It has two objectives. The first is to reconcile the way of…