/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6936795
Youll have people saying that math is the "language of the universe!!!1!" and that we discover it, and then you'll have the right answer ; mathematics are designed that way. We put what we understand in a certain language : mathematics. Still pretty amazing tho

>>6936795
We create mathematics to match what we observe.

>>6936906

There is a certain amount of unreasonableness to it though, isn't there? I mean take charge for example. When Newton was working on the orbit of the planet he had no idea that charge even existed, or at leas no idea what it was but the calculus he was developing to explain orbits turns out to provide the exact functions needed for Maxwell to describe electrical charge. So these completely different fields of physics use the same exact methods to describe each of them.

On the other hand you go off of the hypothesis that all of the values in both endeavors are fundamentally quantitative (Mass and charge) and anything quantitative is subject to mathematical laws. If it can be counted it can be calculated, regardless of where it comes from.

But then you get into ideas that don't seem quantifiable like the -1/12 infinite number series sum or probability amplitudes where the concepts are so baffling and the results seem so counter-intuitive and yet even when rational thought and language can't seem to describe these phenomena and ideas mathematics can.

>>6936795
>In other words is it amazing that mathematics can be used to describe all the phenomena of the universe

Yes, see
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences

>or plainly obvious as that is what mathematics was designed to do in the first place

Absolutely not

>>6936795
My go-to link for whenever this discussion comes up:
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Derek_Abbott/publication/256838918_The_Reasonable_Ineffectiveness_of_Mathematics/links/00b7d523d5bd289428000000