The irony is that it’s everywhere, yet we can’t see ‘it’. We don’t know about its birth year or where ‘it’ exactly started. ‘It’ has had many definitions that have evolved from the ancient times to now. Aristotle defined ‘it’ as ‘the science of quantity’. But, as people dug deeper into ‘it’, they learnt new things and ‘it’ became more abstract. So people gave ‘it’ more logical and philosophical definitions. Bertrand Russell, a British mathematician, defined ‘it’ as ‘symbolic logic’. Walter Sawyer, another mathematician, defined ‘it’ as ‘the classification and study of all possible patterns’. Today, the encyclopedia defines ‘it’ as ‘the science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from elemental practices of counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects’. This is the world of Mathematics. Where did it come from? Is it a human creation or is it a feature of the universe?
Mathematics is undoubtedly one of the most important subjects known to man. It is artistic, exhaustive and sometimes even beautiful. But where did it come from? As we know, every science needs mathematics. Physics needs mathematics, chemistry needs mathematics, rocket science involves mathematics and so does the universal system of money. However, mathematics is the study of mathematics, which means that unlike the other sciences, it lacks an empirical component. One cannot see math happening. People might argue saying that if you had one person and if you cloned that person, you would have two of them and this is provable. But are these one, two, addition, etc a part of the universe or a product of the genius human brain? Yash Amit Nanavati Professor Sarah Finn Unit 2 project 1:35PM batch
This question has two possible answers, each with broad perspectives: mathematics is real or mathematics is not real. Mathematic realism suggests that mathematical entities exists independent of the human mind. The human did not invent mathematics, but rather discover it. Mathematic antirealism suggests that mathematics statements have truth-values but that they do not do so by corresponding to a special realm of immaterial or non- empirical entities. Here, mathematics is a creation of the human mind. The most popular position taken today is that mathematics is real and has an objective existence. This mathematic realism idea says that mathematics exists in the universe and humans uncover these and bring them to practical use. Also, there are more concepts out there waiting to be discovered, after which they are added to our existing mathematics knowledge.
What happens if a concept is found that disproves all the existing knowledge? Wouldn’t this change pretty much all we know about our universe? I think that Mathematics plays a bigger role in our life than we can imagine. If a mathematical concept disproves all our existing knowledge, we would have to start from scratch and learn about the universe all over again. This is because we use mathematical concepts and calculations to find out about the unknown and if concept is found that disproves all the existing knowledge, then we wouldn’t really know anything about the universe accurately and without error. This overlaps with any other science because science is falsifiable, provable, non-dogmatic and abstract. Take the example of the Higgs Boson or the ‘God particle’. Here, if we find the Higgs Boson particle, then that would explain all the unknown sub atomic masses in our universe. Also, if we might be able to achieve a speed faster than the speed of light, and we have but it was for a very short negligible amount of time, than Yash Amit Nanavati Professor Sarah Finn Unit 2 project 1:35PM batch
Einstein’s theory that the speed of light cannot be attained, let alone go faster. This would result in a change of the understanding of distances and how the universe works.
Antirealists believe that mathematics doesn’t just exist as a feature of the universe, but it is a creation of the human mind, and exists no where else. There are a bunch of different ideas based on this ideology, like mathematics is a metaphor, a language,etc. I find a very popular antirealist belief known as fictionalism particularly interesting, which states that mathematics is a fiction and a story that man wrote. We use this complete and good story of mathematics to describe real things which do not themselves contain mathematics. For example, a cheetah runs at 93 km/hr while hunting, but the cheetah doesn’t need to know this to hunt or perform this task. But, we use the story of mathematics that human created to understand the cheetah and like this we use it to understand our surroundings. So, mathematics here tells us nothing about real being, but it is an intelligible consistency, as said by a philosopher named Alain Badiou.
On the other hand, mathematic realists believe that mathematics is a truth and it can be proved. So does the source of Mathematics matter? The source of mathematics does matter because if mathematics is not real, and it is the truth, then are we saying that truth, or a version of it, doesn’t exist? This might mean that there is no real truth and maybe everything is just unreal. On the other hand, some antirealists say that there is only that many of something because humans are there to count it and perceive it. Here, there is no number, or mathematical truth. Here, the existence of mathematics is at stake. So why use mathematics? The answer is reason. In an analogy, we can look to God. So why do some people believe in God? People like to describe, discover, and probe. When something intrigues a human, they need reason for it. In earlier times, when people didn’t know the Yash Amit Nanavati Professor Sarah Finn Unit 2 project 1:35PM batch science behind things like earthquakes, rains, etc they found reason by thinking of it as an act of ‘God’, a reason to their area of unknowable abstract interest. The connection between mathematics and God can be that people needed reason for the way things work in our universe. Or, just like the counter argument for mathematical antirealism is that mathematics exists, the counter argument for God as a reason for an unknown interest could be that God actually exists or has existed. Maybe math is just created by the humans to understand the universe? Maybe Math exists in the universe waiting to be unraveled by human in order to be understood? In conclusion, the prime objective is to understand our universe. Will the understanding that Math is a human creation change our views about God? Maybe for some people because they might just think of it as a human creation to satisfy whatever mystifies a human.
Think about Newton and about how man created fire. It was a mere apple that just fell from the sky that kindled the thought for gravitation and the rubbing of stones that created a fire for early humans. This ‘natural phenomenon’ isn’t enough for a human. He needs to find the reason why the apple doesn’t go upward and always falls down. He needs a reason for why the fire was caused and it didn't end there. After finding out how the fire was created, he wanted to understand why different fires were differently hot and why the fire burnt the hand. What I am trying to say is that one question will pose several more for a human. We question the universe and humans say that the universe is infinite. Our questions are infinite.
This is the beauty of Mathematics. It asks us to find ‘x’, the unknown variable, and it also gives us the escape velocity that makes it possible to launch a rocket into space. According to me, Math is a medium through which the unknown is answered and the
Yash Amit Nanavati Professor Sarah Finn Unit 2 project 1:35PM batch known is given reason to. So does it matter whether mathematics is a human creation or a feature of the universe? As I said before, the prime objective is to understand the universe. So, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter if math is a human creation or a feature of the universe because whether math is created by humans to understand their surrounding and give reason to it, or if math is a feature in the universe waiting to be discovered by humans, the main aim is same: reason and answers. “Why?”, a simple question people ask. But, the aftermath of that question leads to what we know today because when a human asked himself, “why does this happen the way it does,” he discovered the answer to that question. Maybe the answer was prevailing in the universe waiting to be questioned and discovered, or maybe the answer was created by the genius human race to understand the phenomenon. The stars shined with or without human discovery and it rained with or without the humans giving reason to it. The only difference is that we cannot see math. Maybe it was in the vast universe waiting to be discovered, or maybe our capable human race created this beautiful science to understand what we know about the unknown ‘x’: the universe. Bibliography:
"Definition of Mathematics." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 May 2013. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
Lamb, Robert. "How Math Works." HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, 26 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
"Mathematics." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 02 Nov. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.