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/sci/ - Science & Math

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4597944 No.4597944 [Reply] [Original]

Hands up if you are a physicist and you have at some time either
(a) claimed that physics is the most fundamental science and is responsible for all of man's technological advances
(b) put down other more applied sciences (chemistry, biology, psychology) because they are "just applied physics"

if you have done either of the above things, please die.
lots of love,

mathematicians

>> No.4597951

>pure math
>hard science
pick none

>> No.4597981

>>4597951

ar eyou saying that neither of these things exist?

>> No.4597985

OP, here.

I AM SOO WASTED LOL

>> No.4597999

>>4597985
I'm guessing you've done either (a) or (b) (or both) and are now considerably butthurt. well, good for you.

>> No.4598005 [DELETED] 

>>4597944
Physics is just math constrained by reality. I like the analogy to writing. Mathematicians spend all day mixing letters, inventing new ones, and saying 'look at the cool combination I made' while physicists actually write words. Math may do interesting stuff, but most of it is useless fluff and circle jerks.

>> No.4598019
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4598019

Physics is certainly not more fundamental than mathematics.

Math wins hands down currently..

HOWEVER.. consider the following.
If ever we are able to fully describe all of existence, it would be claimed under "physics" not "math". The universe itself does not perform mathematical calculations.. and even if it did it would require some mechanism by which to perform them, which would be a physical mechanism.

Since this mechanism would describe exactly how the universe does everything it does, it would describe all that exists within it, including our minds and the mental constructs that make up all of mathematics.

So physics has the potential to be more fundamental.

>> No.4598025

chemistry stops being just applied physics once you leave high school.

>> No.4598035
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4598035

>>4598005
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.

>> No.4598038

>>4598019
To put it another way.

Math is like a language. Physics currently uses math...
But if somehow that ever changes, it's still "physics".
Physics is not defined by the need to use math, it just happens to do so.

>> No.4598180

>>4598005
nonononono mathematics is so very very different from physics. Don't be fooled by the fact that in physics you have "equations" and "numbers". These are not really maths. They are a product of maths. All that airy fairy stuff that we write the the strange letters and notation? That is absolutely crucially important and without it we would be in serious trouble.

>> No.4598189 [DELETED] 

Physics=figuring out how the world works
math=making shit up

>> No.4598200

I think math and physics should be friends.

Math is fundamental to Physics, and Physics is fundamental to everything else. Chemistry and Biology can join us in our friendship.

I think we should focus on picking on engineers.

>> No.4598208

>>4598189
what i find interesting about maths is that you don't need a "world" to study it. it exists entirely independently of man, the earth, the galaxy etc
it's almost god-like, underlying everything, sometimes incredibly beautiful for no apparent reason. If there was anything that would ever convince me of the existence of a higher power, it is maths

>> No.4598209

OP is a buttdevestated mathematician that is getting all angsty that we're the real people who find out why things are the way they are.

>> No.4598214

>>4598200
i used to think this, but then if we didn't have engineers, then nobody would ever actually build anything, which would be a bit of a problem. we could lock them away and make them do our bidding i suppose...

>> No.4598221

>>4597944
Mathematics is just applied physics (physics applied to language).

>> No.4598223

>>4598221

this is what people who haven't taken analysis really believe

>> No.4598227

>>4598209
OP here! This was me:>>4598208
so i think we can safely say that i couldn't give a shit how the world works

>> No.4598228

>>4598208
All subjects don't exist on their own.

What is physics or math without someone to study it?

Physics is the study of the natural world, if there is nobody around to do physics then there is no physics (the things physics DESCRIBES are still there... but not "physics" itself).

Same goes with math. If there is nobody around to do math, then math doesn't exist, the things math DESCRIBES still exist, but "math" itself does not.

>> No.4598235

>>4598221
If this is what you really believe, you realize at a certain point physics just becomes mathematical word problems, right? Basically the entire field of theoretical physics is just a subfield of math that works within a given set of constraints.

>> No.4598237

>>4598228
but maths doesn't describe anything, that's what I'm saying. even if there was no universe, there would still exist the axioms of mathematics (albeit nobody to study them), and hence the rest of mathematics follows

>> No.4598249

Pretty much all of the important advances in mathematics were done in pursuit of physics. Calculus, complex analysis, group theory, geometric topology, etc...

>> No.4598252

>>4598237
To have mathematical axioms you need a physical system to encode them in. Such as a piece of paper or your mind.

>> No.4598259

>>4598252
well i guess i'd sort of disagree with you there. its not like somebody took one apple and defined "1" to be how many oranges there were there. The unit is very much an abstract concept that requires no physical system

>> No.4598260

>>4598259
oops, i said apple, then orange...erm i meant both apple :)

>> No.4598261

>>4598249

This. Pure math is beautiful, but it's a damn shame that pure mathematicians have contributed basically nothing of value in the past century or so.

>> No.4598264

>>4598237

>but maths doesn't describe anything, that's what I'm saying. even if there was no universe, there would still exist the axioms of mathematics

What makes you so sure? The axioms of mathematics cannot even be proved to be consistent.

Math is just a formal way for us to express logic.
So do you think that logic exists without a mind? without a universe?

What is the meaning of a set when you have pure nothingness?

Furthermore.. For all we know the universe could be fundamentally illogical.
Perhaps those axioms of mathematics fall apart somewhere down the line..

I doubt they would... But, who are you to say they wouldn't? Who am I to say they wouldn't?

>> No.4598265

>>4598259
>abstract concept that requires no physical system
Minds are physical systems.

>> No.4598269

>>4598265
if a tree falls in a forest but nobody is around to hear it, it still makes a sound.

i know its a fucking gay analogy, but do you get my point?

>> No.4598268

>>4598249
I think you're just making things up. Group theory, for example, sprang from Galois's study of solutions to algebraic equations, and I'm pretty sure Galois wasn't motivated mainly by physics.

>> No.4598272

>>4598268
and i doubt Cauchy had physics on his mind whilst complex analysis theorems were falling out of his ears

>> No.4598274

>>4598269
That depends on the meaning of "sound." There are sound waves but there is no perception of sound.

For "concept," there is no ambiguity; concepts are always in the mind.

>> No.4598278

>>4598274
yes but even if we knew nothing about maths and were completely naive to the whole thing, that wouldn't stop it from being true

aaaahhhh i don't know. i feel more and more like a philosopher as this thread goes by. I don't like it.

>> No.4598279

/v/

>pc master race reporting in

/mu/

>I just downloaded this artists, plebs will never understand

/fit/

>lol curl bro no lifting faggots, try this, check out these gains

/soc/

>you know that time it is! if you post you must rate

/pol/

>implying that Nordic race is not genetically superior

/sci/

>math
>hard science


you faggots are all the same

>> No.4598280

>>4598005
>This is what physicists actually believe.

>> No.4598285

>>4598279
OP here. It makes me sad that you think this. The whole reason why I made this thread was because I thought that physicists were the main culprits of this, not mathematicians. In my experience, a mathematician has never bragged about being any better than a student of any other discipline. Maybe i'm unique in this, I don't know.

>> No.4598288

>>4598272
>>4598268

Galois just coined the name for group theory, it existed before him and has roots in the work of Euler, Gauss, and Lagrange (all motivated by physics).

Likewise, Cauchy hardly invented complex analysis.

You really should learn your history.

>> No.4598291

>>4598285
its everyone

this is everything that is wrong the world

>> No.4598294

>>4598288
you said advances, you didn't say anything about creating group theory or complex analysis. In my opinion, cauchy and galois have made some of the finest individual contributions to complex analysis and group theory respectively

>> No.4598299

>>4598278
The things math describes would still be true yes.
Doesn't mean math itself is something that would still exist.

The universe just is the way it is.
Math is just the logic we posses put down in a formal way.
Physics describes the behavior of the universe using logic (hence math).

The universe is the very thing that ALLOWS us to use logic.
What is logic anyway? Just statements of observation on their most general level possible? Ok... So who's to say that another universe wouldn't have different logic?
(and hence different math).

>> No.4598302

>>4598294

Hey, mathematicians are great at proving theorems and firming up foundations nicely. But all the initial groundbreaking work is generally done in the pursuit of physics.

>> No.4598310
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4598310

>> No.4598313

>>4598299
>>4598299
I think it's obvious we disagree on some ridiculously fundamental point (maybe what we mean by "maths"), which we could maybe get to the bottom of if we argued for hours, but its 4:30am here so i'm going to call it a day. thanks though, it was interesting talking to you. better than browsing /b/ anyway.

OP out

>> No.4598314
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4598314

>> No.4598317

>>4598302
this

>> No.4598318

>>4598302
hahahaha i think galois would turn in his grave if he heard you call his theory "firming up"

>> No.4598332

>>4598288
out of interest. What WERE Gauss Lagrange and Euler trying to do in physics when they coined group theory?

>> No.4598351

Physics is applied math

math by its self is only useful when it comes to finances

Physics is always useful

>> No.4598358
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4598358

Mathematics is not a science. There are no measurements to be made, no physical reality that it must conform to. Mathematicians are limited only by self-consistency and their imagination.

It is in this sense that physics is the most fundamental science. That doesn't mean it's better, any more than formal logic is better than (say) group theory. It's just that if you keep breaking a science down into components, eventually everything turns into physics.

Analyzing the migratory pattern of birds could be done by time-evolving the bird/environment wavefunction, but that's massively impractical.

>> No.4599070

>>4598358
you're possibly right, but in any case, this was not intended to be a maths vs physics thread. my point was that some physicists take the credit for showing how the world works whilst the maths that they use without proof is never pointed out as notable.

>> No.4599076

All of you are such fucking retards. Do whatever you enjoy, be it mathematics, physics, biology or engineering. As long as it is not social science, of course.

>> No.4599081

>>4599076
To reiterate, I feel like this thread went off track. I like physics AND maths. What I don't like are physicists (a) and (b)

>> No.4599104

>>4598358

Fuck, now I have to play Riven again.

>> No.4599121

Hands up if you are a mathematician and you have at some time either
(a) claimed that math is the most fundamental science and is responsible for all of man's technological advances
(b) put down other more applied sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) because they are "just applied mathematics"

if you have done either of the above things, please die.
lots of love,

logicians

>> No.4599218

>>4599121
I don't see how logic goes any deeper than what you can study on a maths course. does it?
also, i'd never do (b)
but if what you say is true then i might be guilty of (a)

>> No.4599544

Engineering. Putting Maths and Physics to good use.

You're welcome.

>> No.4599618

>>4597944
i'm a physicist and i did b), but i realize math is superior

>> No.4599627

>>4598025
that's when it starts being applied physics.

>> No.4601546

>>4599070

Mathematics suffers an image problem, even among physicists who should know better. Mathematics is a wonderful and expressive tool for defining and exploring structure, and even physicists sometimes take it for granted.