Presumably, that means medalist Alain Connes was never drafted into the current war on math.
Among a number of mathematicians who think that math really exists we find him quoted:
Alain Connes, Fields Medalist 1982:
“Two extreme viewpoints are opposed in relation to mathematical activity. The first, to which I completely subscribe, is of Platonic inspiration: it postulates that there exists a mathematical reality, raw, primitive, which predates its discovery. A world which exploration requires the creation of tools, as it was necessary to invent vessels to cross the oceans. The second viewpoint is the one of the formalists; they deny any preexistence to mathematics, believing that they are a formal game, based on axioms and logical deductions, thus a pure human creation.”
Then he adds,
“This viewpoint seems more natural to the non-mathematician, who refuses to postulate an unknown world of which he has no perception. People understand that mathematics is a language, but not that it is a reality external to the human spirit. The great discoveries of the twentieth century, especially the works of Gödel, have shown that the formalist viewpoint is not tenable. Whatever the exploratory medium, the formal system used, there will always be mathematical truths that will elude it, and mathematical reality cannot be reduced to the logical consequences of a formal system.”
Antoine Bret, “ I’d say math exist” at Antoine’s Blog
Bret, who describes himself as a Christian and a physicist, offers a number of other quotable quotes on the reality of math.
The “formalist” idea that math doesn’t really exist helps account for Big Brother’s world in which 2+2=5 if the Party says so.
So okay, if math really exists, it undermines a great deal of the nonsense barked about consciousness as an evolved illusion. That is, if consciousness enables us to apprehend what really exists, there is good reason for believing that consciousness itself exists.
Ridiculous theories about consciousness also exist but, like unicorns, they are abstractions that do not coincide with reality.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
See also: The progressive war on science takes dead aim at math
Well, it depends on the definition of math. Many math-style functions are intrinsic to life. Exp, log, tanh, counting, adding, subtracting, inequalities and comparisons, several levels of derivatives and integrals. All living things perform these functions all the time.
Other math-style rules are NOT intrinsic to life. The commutative and associative properties never work in living math.
Proofs aren’t part of math at all. Proofs are just a peculiar hobby that academics enjoy, like arguing about citations or competing for grants. The above discussion about Godel has no connection to math.
News say; “The “formalist” idea that math doesn’t really exist helps account for Big Brother’s world in which 2+2=5 if the Party says so.”
Hogwash. I’m not getting into this again, but News ought to at least not say ridiculous things that conflates a serious viewpoint in mathematical philosophy with Orwellian brainwashing.
Lawrence Krauss – 2+2=5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOrlIOm6eGM
Folks,
Connes has a money-shot point pivoting on the irreducible complexity of describable structure and quantity:
KF
BA77,
Krause plays equivocation. What is perhaps arguable is that
~ 2 + ~ 2 = ~ (3 to 5)
That is 1.5 + 1.5 = 3
and 2.5 + 2.5 = 5
where those are outer limits for roughly 2, represented as ~2.
KF
The clip is obviously from a longer speech, but I, along with the science teacher, always talked about accuracy and significant digits at the start of the year. We stressed that measured quantities are never exact, and in the real world use of math you had to pay attention to that. The science teacher taught that a distance of 5 cm, for instance is 5 ± 0.5, 5.0 is 5 ± 0.05, 5.00 is 5 ± 0.005, etc. I think that is Krauss’ point. This has nothing to do with News’ statement.
As to:
And although the Christian Theist indeed has very powerful philosophical and/or logical proofs that God must be behind the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics”,,,.
And although the Christian Theist indeed has very powerful philosophical and/or logical proofs that God must be behind the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics”, the Christian Theist can now also appeal to empirical science itself in order to further ‘scientifically’ prove that God must behind the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics”.
In laying this empirical proof out, I will appeal to the ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’ and also to the recent experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment..
An old entry in wikipedia described the Quantum Zeno effect as such “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”
Atheistic materialists have tried to get around the Quantum Zeno effect by postulating that interactions with the environment are sufficient to explain the Quantum Zeno effect. Yet, the following interaction-free measurement of the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.
In short, the quantum zeno effect, regardless of how atheistic materialists may feel about it, is experimentally shown to be a real effect that is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation. And thus the statement of “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay”, stands as being a true statement.
Moreover, on top of that, in quantum information theory, through experimental realiztion of the Maxwell demon thought experiment, it is now shown that entropy is not a property of a system, but “a property of an observer who describes a system.”
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence,“Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The reason why I am very impressed with these developments in quantum information theory which empirically demonstrate that entropy is “a property of an observer who describes a system.”, is that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is VERY foundational in its explanatory role in science.
As the following article states, “Entropy explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,,”,, “Even gravity,,,, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,,”
Entropy is also, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Finely tuned to an almost incomprehensible degree of precision, 1 part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power. As Roger Penrose himself stated that, “This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.”
In the following video, Dr, Bruce Gordon touches upon just how jaw droppingly enormous that number truly is. Dr. Gordon states, “you would need a hundred million, trillion, trillion, trillion, universes our size, with a zero on every proton and neutron in all of those universes just to write out this number. That is how fine tuned the initial entropy of our universe is.”
And yet, to repeat the last sentence from the quantum information paper, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
This statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which happen to explain time itself, even care if I am, via the quantum zeno effect and quantum information theory, consciously observing them unless “an observer who describes a system” really is more foundational to this universe than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is?
To state the obvious, this empirical finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system.” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality and adds considerable empirical weight to the already powerful philosophical and/or logical proofs that the Christian Theist already has that God must be behind the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics”
Moreover, unlike atheistic materialism which predicted none of this, Christianity predicted that the Mind of God is behind entropy of the universe thousands of years ago before empirical science even came along. For instance, Romans chapter 8: verses 20 and 21 itself states, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Of supplemental note, entropy is also the primary reason why our own material, temporal, bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,
As well it is interesting to note that the primary source for increasing entropy in the universe are Black holes:
Kip Thorne describes the extremely destructive power inherent in black holes in this following quote:
i.e. Black Holes are found to be ‘timeless’, i.e. ‘eternal’, singularities of destruction and disorder rather than being singularities of creation and order such as the extreme order we see at the creation event of the Big Bang.
Needless to say, the implications of this ‘eternity of destruction’ should be fairly disturbing for those of us who are of a. shall we say, ‘spiritually minded’ persuasion!
Thus in order to deal with the entropy associated with death itself it necessarily follows that gravity itself must somehow be dealt with.
And again, unlike atheists who, with string theory and its red step child M-theory, are basically in mathematical fantasy-land,
And again, unlike atheists who, with string theory and its red step child M-theory, are basically in mathematical fantasy-land, the Christian Theist can appeal directly to empirical evidence, via the Shroud of Turin, to support his claim that Jesus Christ dealt with gravity, and thus defeated death itself, in his resurrection from the dead.
In the following video Isabel Piczek states,,, The muscles of the body are absolutely not crushed against the stone of the tomb. They are perfect. It means the body is hovering between the two sides of the shroud. What does that mean? It means there is absolutely no gravity.
The following article, (which is behind a paywall), states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’
Kevin Moran, who is an optical engineer who worked on the mysterious ‘3-Dimensional’ nature of the Shroud image, states that,, ,,, “The radiation that made the image acted perfectly parallel to gravity. There is no side image.,,, It is not a continuum or spherical-front radiation that made the image, as visible or UV light. It is not the X-ray radiation that obeys the one over R squared law that we are so accustomed to in medicine. It is more unique,,, This suggests a quantum event where a finite amount of energy transferred abruptly. The fact that there are images front and back suggests the radiating particles were released along the gravity vector.”
In the following paper, the researchers found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms.
And to further drive this point home, the following study ‘concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud.’
Moreover, the overturning of the Copernican principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics adds considerable weight to my claim that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is the correct ‘theory of everything’
And thus in conclusion, if we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders of modern science),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the confirmation of the Maxwell Demon thought experiment that empirically demonstrated that ‘entropy is a property of an observer who describes the system’, as well as with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company in 2018), if we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics then that provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
Verse and video:
BA77’s #8
‘‘What is referred to as M-theory isn’t even a theory. It’s a collection of ideas, hopes, aspirations.’
ROFL. Really. Truly. Well, not literally physically. But some truths are just riotously comical to read ; and brevity being the soul of wit, the more economically expressed, the more hilarious. At last, I can see myself as a scientist ! Science for drop-outs.
In another connection :
‘This statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which happen to explain time itself, even care if I am, via the quantum zeno effect and quantum information theory, consciously observing them unless “an observer who describes a system” really is more foundational to this universe than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is?’
Shades of my notion that we each live in a little, divinely-created world of our own, integrated and coordinated by the Almighty to appear seamless at the mechanistic level. I mentioned that it seemed to be implied by the remark of a rabbi in the Talmud, a very mixed source of wisdom, admittedly, when he asserted that when a person dies, a whole world dies with him.
However, it also seems to be implied by the whole primacy of the Observer discovery at the quantum level. Or does it ?
Somebody was kind enough to actually provide the ‘chapter and verse’ in the Talmud – though I was too disorganised to record it.