/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7408333]

So I had an argument yesterday - everyone was against me. Basically, they claimed that one can understand theoretical physics, QM, etc. without mathematics, and that mathematicians often make mistakes, and so on. They went on with their pseudo-scientific dumbed down science talk after trying to force their idiotic point of view on me. Oh, and their best one: "You can't exclude people who don't know mathematics from a debate about theoretical physics.".

Someone even said "Oh, Anon, he (the person who presented the argument) has a deep philosophical understanding of science.". The guy he was referring to was spouting nonintellectual insane bullshit.
I didn't even respond.

WTF is this shit? Anyone had similar experiences?

[Anonymous No.7408337]

>>7408333
>simply ebin

[Anonymous No.7408342]

Holy shit OP i love you


I've had the same exact experience with every single philosopher i've ever met. They all think that the world runs on paranormal energy and the government fills us all up with drugs and we're all slaves and pigs. Jesus christ they're all stupid too and believe they're all enlightened and of course lesser minds flock to them for who fucking knows why.

I feel you OP, there are tons are of people like that unfortunately

[Anonymous No.7408343]

>>7408342
90% of the time they use drugs as well, forgot to mention that

[Anonymous No.7408344]

>>7408333
>Oh, and their best one: "You can't exclude people who don't know mathematics from a debate about theoretical physics.".

If they want to spectate or ask questions, excluding them from a debate would be kind of a dick move.

And even as long as what they're saying isn't predicated on some kind of shaky understanding of mathematics, they could have useful input too. It's good to engage people who aren't necessarily experts because it spreads the pleasure of science to people who haven't necessarily invested their entire lives into it.

I know that's not really what you were talking about, and I'm kind of missing the point here. It's just that one sentence stuck out to me really hard.

[Anonymous No.7408348]

>some people are idiots
Am I.. Am I meant to be shocked?

[Anonymous No.7408357]

critical thinking and logic is something we're all capable of doing.
you can conclude a lot of things in physics by observing nature and how things work. so yeah, as a physicist, I don't think you need to know any physics or math to be able to ponder on these things. higher level math and physics just helps open some doors and helps you realize things quicker then from observation.

I do get your point, people think highly of themselves and think that science is a matter of debate. a lot of people don't understand how theory works in mathematics or physics.

but it did all come from philosophy, you can't deny that part.

[Anonymous No.7408358]

>>7408333
it depends
-the first step is to modelize phenomenon through mathematics

that you do not need maths here

-from these initial equations, you apply some deductive logic that you like [typically, classical logic] and obtain subsequent equations

these subsequent equations are new equations and people will put them into words, they go back to the natural language

every logical deduction can be done in natural language. maths is just a language build around inferences rules where any ontology of the entity wherewith you work is removed. You do not ask what a differential operator is, you ask what can be done with it, what are the relations that the operator has towards other mathematical objects that you consider


=> maths is the language which is the most devoid of ''ontology'', of inherent essence. There is nothing to understand in math. When you try to explain a relationship between to well formed formulas, how you get one from the other, you always try to seek a picture of ''what is happening''.
When you try to understand what a manifold is, you do not say it is a some n-tuple, you say it is a space [of points in classical maths] with some topology. A topology is not a bunch of open sets with some relations, but a category to say what is a neighbourhood and what points are the same, through some notion of equivalence of points.


now you ask about ''to understand'', Nobody knows what ''to understand'' means.

all physics can be recast in natural language, because you do not need the formalization of mathematics to use deductive logic.
formalized maths is just a technique which is very pure of ontology, where all the circularity and vagueness of the natural language are removed.

take F = m a, this can be cast in natural language, and if you take some system, say the harmonic oscillator, you can write every equations in plain language and every step form equation to another one will be done without formalized maths.

[Anonymous No.7408464]

>the mathematics

The problem with physics today is the mathematical model overriding observation to the point where fudges such as dark matter and dark energy are preached as gospel. If I were to state that I think dark energy is a fabrication it would be me who would be attacked, yet it's clear that the model of gravity is broken as fuck.

[Anonymous No.7408482]

>>7408333
They're right.

The problem with math is it very commonly leads to delusion. You built your conceptual understanding around or alongside the math and funny enough, likely possess as many deficits as you think they do. Why can't you have it all? Part of it is just the nature of being alive, the other part is that you clearly do not listen.

[Anonymous No.7408486]

>philosophical understanding of science
i can hardly contain my rage

[Anonymous No.7408502]

>>7408358

Not Op but I can see where you are coming from however I think there is a serious flaw in your logic. Just because you can convert something to natural language doesn't mean it is understandable to the people. In learning mathematics you learn how a tonne of tools work that you need to understand the topic, ie talking about GR without at least a coarse understanding of differential geometry is pure sophistry. Sure you can talk about some effects such as time dilation but as a physics tutor I can tell you that this is confusing to the people learning it when they have access to the equations and that purely physical explanations are typically not helpful.

Basically I am trying to say the there is more to math than simple language, there is a host of tools and techniques and just being able to give an explanation of the maths in natural language doesn't mean people will readily understand it. The two things that readily come to mind are trying explain something like Fourier transforms without any math in a way such that people could understand it and all of the retarded things I have read over the years from non physicists about the Casmir effect.

[Anonymous No.7408507]

>>7408333
>philosophical understanding of science
I don't know whether to laugh or get mad.

[Anonymous No.7408528]

>>7408464
>I don't understand basic physics but I won't let that stop me from posting about dark matter and energy.

[Anonymous No.7408544]

>>7408528

>dark energy is totes real the math says so :^)

[Anonymous No.7408551]

>>7408544
genuine upvote

[Anonymous No.7408577]

>>7408544
>Dark energy is a hypothesis because evidence shows the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing.

[Anonymous No.7408582]

>>7408507
this

[Anonymous No.7408671]

This is my childhood, fucking retards.

[Anonymous No.7408677]

simple explanation that would have gotten you out of said scenario.
Math in science is a measuring device, you might be able to estimate how many meters you can throw a ball and you may get a close approximation, but if you want to be able to share and repeat your results, you are better off having a precise measure.

I've entertained people that believe our math system has some fundamental flaws, it vary well may. But its the current system we are working under, and it has been shown to at least provide results for the time being.

[Anonymous No.7408700]

>>7408333

the best response in those kinds of arguments is to say

"i don't know." "based on what information do you think that?" you can drive that down all the way to the axiomatic level, and the deeper you go the more likely they are to disagree with each other at which point they'll fight each other .
at this point you can lean back and drink your beer with a smug facial expression.

[Anonymous No.7408717]

>>7408333
You can't really reason with people like this, their like occultists and religious people, their anti-intellectual bullshit has been reinforced by years of group think and confirmation bias. After all they have "DEGREES" in philosophy and they read "BOOKS" so they must understand QM and can apply it however they want to into their post-modern essays.


>7408342
>They all think that the world runs on paranormal energy and the government fills us all up with drugs and we're all slaves and pigs. Jesus christ they're all stupid too and believe they're all enlightened and of course lesser minds flock to them for who fucking knows why.
This, they probably all vote Democrat too.

[Anonymous No.7408723]

>>7408333
if you weren't able to demonstrate how they were wrong in multiple different ways then you clearly have an extremely limited understanding of physics or low intelligence yourself.

[Anonymous No.7408734]

>>7408358
Mathematics isn't simply a language of symbols.

When you use the "equals" or "For every" or "there exists" or other logical qualifiers, you are making statements that are understood in terms of language.

saying "the set consisting of the elements 1, 2 and 2 is the same as the set consisting of the elements 1 and 2"
is exactly the same as writing
{1,2,2} = {1,2}
It is completely false and disingenuous to act like the first statement is not maths but the second statement is maths. they mean exactly the same thing ad are both statements about maths but the second is written in a short-hand notation commonly used by mathematicians to be quicker and less ambiguous than languages like English can be.

So "recasting" physics in natural language does not remove the mathematics at all, the mathematics is still all there

When a pop scientist reads a pop-science book they are not reading a genuine physics textbook that has simply had every equation re-written in natural language instead of symbols, they are reading a book that has glossed over or removed nearly all the mathematics.

so your argument has nothing to do with the question.

[Anonymous No.7408746]

>>7408358
>all physics can be recast in natural language
Right, the problem is they do not do that, they do not understand the physics in the first place.

It's simple intellectual etiquette to not try and debate something you do not understand.

[Anonymous No.7408771]

You can understand most classical stuff and even special relativity I suppose.
But QM and GR start to get a bit messier and, especially QM, are very entangled(heh) with maths.

Like the whole curvature = gravity thing. If you know about abstract manifold geometry you have a good idea of what those things mean, even if you are not a physicist(like myself), but a pleb is going to probably be confused at best.

And let's not even talk QM...

[Anonymous No.7408868]

>>7408577

>dark energy is a fudge because the model doesn't match observation

[Anonymous No.7408890]

Keep fighting the good fight OP.

[Anonymous No.7408940]

>>7408734
>{1,2,2} = {1,2}
a side note: this equality is not always true, this equality depends on your choice on what a number is, especially on how to compare two numbers

this equality holds in classical mathematics, but not in constructive mathematics
>>7408734
>So "recasting" physics in natural language does not remove the mathematics at all, the mathematics is still all there
if not the deduction of equations form other equations, what do you call mathematics [in physics] then ?


>>7408734
>so your argument has nothing to do with the question.
indeed, since the OP lacks rigour.

[Anonymous No.7409094]

>>7408868
>You can't alter models when new evidence becomes available.

[Anonymous No.7409125]

> has a deep philosophical understanding of science
If you do feel the need to respond (and your policy of not doing so is probably best), you can counter with, "Fine, but everything he has said, from the standpoint of facts about the real world, is incorrect." And that should end the discussion. If people press it, you just repeat, "but what he said is provably untrue."

>>7408357
> it did all come from philosophy
Not really. It all comes from experimental evidence that has been distilled into generalizations that allow prediction.

The original foundations of logic were once philosophy, fine, but those too have been superceded and are based on a far more rigorous set of axioms. There's very little in modern math that's recognizable to a philosopher, and nothing in modern science.

[Anonymous No.7409431]

>>7408357
yes this is true, but then people begin to talk about things they can't observe and then they lose all credibility

[Anonymous No.7409478]

>>7408333
>Basically, they claimed that one can understand theoretical physics, QM, etc. without mathematics

...yes?

We were maybe ten when I had an argument with my cousin - he claimed that if you attached a magnet to the front and the back of a car and one was stronger than the other, the car would be pushed by the stronger one. At ten, I had obviously never heard of vectors and never drawn a free body diagram - I could probably not even tell you what the difference was between "force" and "energy" - but I could intuitively understand that this was bullshit and would never work, hence the argument. I even tried to explain that the magnets would be pushing each other equally no matter which one was stronger and trust me: At ten, I did not know any of Newtons laws.

Now, maybe YOU cannot intuitively understand physics without the math. Maybe that's because you don't belong on this board.

[Anonymous No.7409482]

>>7408507
>I don't know whether to laugh or get mad.

Depends on whether you want OP's ruse-post to successfully troll you or not.

[Anonymous No.7409547]

>>7409094
Don't bother, he's being so aggressive about it because it makes him feel superior to the scientific community to act like he's uncovered some secret about dark energy developing as an explanation. He projects his own ignorance onto everyone else and makes grandiose statements about models being fucked up and hypotheses being fudges. This type of reaction is somewhat common with people who want to pretend they know about the current scientific theories without the effort of actually understanding them.

[Anonymous No.7409682]

I've yet to have someone outside of the internet try to make this case to my face. If anyone gets anywhere near it, I shut it down pretty quickly with "All physics since Newtonian physics is just math. It's math based on empirical evidence, used to describe the physical universe, but in the end, it is ALL math." If they don't believe me (though like I said, that's yet to occur) I would probably tell them that quantum theory, as an example, is an extension to probability theory that can easily apply to non-physical phenomenon that have literally no relationship to physical phenomenon, other than the underlying mathematical structure. If they still don't get it, I would end the conversation.

[Anonymous No.7409685]

>>7409478
Understanding a consequences of physics is not the same thing as understanding physics. That's like saying I, as someone who has never studied relativity, understand it, because I know it approximately reduces to Newtonian physics at low masses and velocities. Yeah, that's something that happens *because* of relativistic physics, but it's not understanding what the fuck that is.

[Anonymous No.7409773]

>>7408940
Mathematics is choosing axioms then logically deriving results I.e. Theorems from those axioms.

Whether the results and their logical derivation is written in conventional symbols like +, <, {},etc. or in full sentences (like was the norm for all mathematics done by the Greeks) makes no significant difference.

When the people in the OP were argueung that you did not need to know the mathematics of theoretical physics and QM in order to understand or discuss theoretical physics or QM , what they imagine is someone explaining physics but not saying with any precision whatsoever what the important relationships or theorems are (e.g. Simply saying that the further apart two objects are, the less attracted to each other they will be by gravity, instead of precisely explaining that the force if attraction is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance between them multiplied by each of their masses)
And where none of the theorems are given derivation , just the final result summarised in an immaculate way like above .

Mathematics stated in natural language is still mathematics. Physics without mathematics is simply incorrect and inaccurate , fudged, summarised physics

[Anonymous No.7409833]

>tfw when caught my gf making out with a philosophy phd
Don't worry though folks, I went fucking mental at her.

[Anonymous No.7409872]

>>7409833
Woah you told her off that sure taught her a lesson

[Anonymous No.7410079]

>try to debate people
>fail to get your point across/think of a rebuttal later/too much of a pussy to full on debate
>rush on the internet to call them dumb while they can't see you
ur an faggot OP

[Anonymous No.7410089]

>>7408333
>I didn't even respond.
so your story is basically,
>I'm too much of a pussy to argue with people so I call them stupid on the internet after I walk away in shame

[Anonymous No.7410094]

>>7409125
>and are based on a far more rigorous set of axioms.

Still philosophy bro.

[Anonymous No.7410112]

>>7409478
That's not how it works with theoretical physics or QM

[Anonymous No.7410119]

>>7408358
Math isn't simply the formal manipulation of symbols, though. For instance, Newton's works did not include all of the symbolic notation we use today, but wrote out, in plain latin, the mathematical operations.

[Anonymous No.7410280]

>>7409685
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." -Feynman.

He says it better when talking about electromagnatism. Everyone can understand it to some level, but then you go deeper and deeper and there isn't really an end. You can understand physics to some degree without math, any scientist knows it better but probably has not studied the math, maybe they just know some electro-chemistry or circuits. A physicist knows it better but at the end of it you can't say you know it all.

Any physicist that says you can't understand any physics without math is far too arrogant. Physicists would hate it if a biologist said they knew nothing about the human body. Everyone knows a little but, but they don't know what all the parts are called.

[Anonymous No.7410689]

>>7409547

I'm not being agressive, just stating a fact that reality is being framed to fit the model and cast as gospel. How much effort is being put into experiment to observe what the model predicts vs expanding alternate models? How many physicists are across alternate models vs those that regurgitate what they're taught via rote?

My point is there comes a time when sometimes the math shouldn't be an end unto itself; see string theory.

[Anonymous No.7410707]

>>7410689
Thing is, a lot of the cheep and easy experiments have been done. There isn't much that's cheep to do in physics anymore. It's not like biology where they have just opened the door to genetics and have tons of new stuff to work with. New physics is expensive and a lot of it we don't have the technology or the energy for testing it. Even the smaller experiments are a lot harder than biology, like nanotech and quantum computing.

There is nothing wrong with following the math, some good stuff has come out of string theory whether that turns out to be right or not. But I do understand your point, eventually it has to lead back to experiment or it's nothing but a mathematical curiosity.

[Anonymous No.7410729]

> after trying to force their idiotic point of view on me.
This statement is problematic, and more indicative of your point of view than theirs.

To address your point, if we were discussing cars, would I need to know how the engine works in order to discuss cars with you? No. If we were talking engines, we would of course.

People enjoy the concepts. Talk the concepts with them. If they want to talk math, discuss the math with them. Show off what you've spent your life learning. Be a benevolent intellectual, don't be a snob. Learn to steer conversations so that others will focus.

[Anonymous No.7410772]

>>7410280
You're a moron.

>Everyone can understand it to some level, but then you go deeper and deeper and there isn't really an end.
No. There are limitless applications of QM, and any theory, but the laws are explicitly finite. Let's go back to Newtonian physics. I can completely know all of Newtonian physics (which, again, means understanding the math), without knowing a solution to the three body problem. That means I have complete understanding, without complete knowledge of the consequences (which, of course, no one can have). Conversely, someone who knows "magnets on either side of a car can't move it" knows one *effect* of Newtonian physics, which bears no god damn relation to their understanding of Newtonian physics itself. Maybe they know it because of the math behind the physics, or maybe they can just tell from their own empirical understanding of physics. But knowing this one fact in no way implies they understand Newtonian physics, relativistic physics, or quantum physics that underlies the phenomenon.

>Any physicist that says you can't understand any physics without math is far too arrogant.
No, they are being correct. Again, you can understand that some things are caused "because of physics," but if you don't know the math behind it, YOU DON'T KNOW THE PHYSICS. It really is that simple.

[Anonymous No.7410822]

>>7408333

sorry that happened to you man. problem is that people often read one article about popSci bullshit and suddenly know everything.

i always act as if i take people like this seriously and ask them question after question, they get tired soon because they can't answer and eventually stop.

[Anonymous No.7410958]

>>7410707

Yes that's pretty much it. The theory is all well and good but as a regular reader I often see dark matter and dark energy presented as matter-of-fact reality, not as a theoretical stopgap. Until there is some actual observation, it may be that there are other unknown forces or even the concept of gravity is totally wrong.

To bring this up in scientific discussion "muh math" is just not science.

[Anonymous No.7410983]

>>7408700
>drive that down all the way to the axiomatic level

finally, someone who understands how philosophical discussion works

>the more likely they are to disagree with each other at which point they'll fight each other

sophist.

[Anonymous No.7411006]

>>7408333
I am Jason Barnett, and I think you all are retards. Have you solved my quintuple non linear Gaussian quantum homophobic integrals yet? No. Keep trying to act like you're not one of them, foo.

[Anonymous No.7411012]

>>7408464
The problem here is that for modem theoretical physics the mathematics behind it is often the only way you can refer to it apart for "this is a -insertthingnamehere-"

This is something ye old Susskind said in his first lecture about QM: most often our limited minds cannot understand some concepts but by the use of math. He specifically makes the example of the motion and behaviour of an electron: no one can really visualise that, all you can do is know the math it follows.
So there you go, no math means you won't really get it. You may try to sort of kind of more or less give an approximate explanation without using math, but you will be incomplete and quite probably inaccurate.

If one wants to go as far as debating, he does need to talk numbers.

[Anonymous No.7411019]

>>7411012
that goes down the road of "shut up and calculate' though. A lot of people doing the math don't really understand it, they are plugging away. I mostly know engineers that are like that, they don't think about what the math means.

Honestly, I think philosophers dropped the ball big time in the 20s and 30s (and I guess ever since). Cause some philosophical thinking could have gone a long way to clarify what interpretations are valid and which aren't.

[Anonymous No.7411025]

>>7411019
> some philosophical thinking could have gone a long way

Example or will claim bullshit

[Anonymous No.7411050]

>>7411025
The Solvay conference's (the big two) was largely gathered to work through the philosophical, or meaning, of quantum mechanics. Einstein and Bohr credit a lot of their physics progress to philosophy and this conference was a great display of that. However, when it was done and the thought experiment was left hanging no one seemed to touch the topic until Bell. A clear example of how philosophy was able to pose a question that had a physical answer.

Would the experiment have happened earlier if philosophers were more in touch with real world science rather than outlandish ideas? I think so. What other interpretations may have physical tests we can do on them? There is some ideas on how to test for some of these interpretations coming out now, so time will tell if it leads anywhere.

[Anonymous No.7411054]

If you want to talk about quantum mechanics and don't even know what bras and kets are, you probably shouldn't.

[Anonymous No.7411063]

>>7411050
The problem was that the physical evidence could be interpreted differently .
I don't see how this is a philosophical question.
If you work as a career physicist no one cares that much which interpretation you use, whether you use the conventional Copenhagen interpretation or pilot waves, as long as your maths and final answer works out.

[Anonymous No.7411071]

>>7411063
>The problem was that the physical evidence could be interpreted differently
and that's what good philosophers are good at teasing out. It may not be what normally falls under philosophy, but it's a skill they have that could be better used than contemplating if we live in the matrix

Yes, I know it doesn't matter to what we do in physics now, but it may have consequences later. Or, these things may help people learn the field in the future, so it has a meaning that can be explained. Also, it's just fun to think about.

[Anonymous No.7411084]

>>7410689
>just stating a fact that reality is being framed to fit the model

But this is wrong, the model is being altered to fit observations. Take dark energy, observation shows that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, this wasn't predicted but when it was discovered accounting for it in the model was simple: a constant term was added to Robertson-Walker metric. Likewise with dark matter, observation shows that rotation curves for galaxies behave as if there more mass than that which is observable, ie it's dark. Now there is a competing model called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), MOND leads to many of the same conclusions as dark matter when discussing individual galaxies but, unlike the dark matter hypothesis, brakes down when looking at clusters of galaxies, so even with MOND you still need dark matter.

>>7410958

>I often see dark matter and dark energy presented as matter-of-fact reality

Because they are facts, there is an energy driving the expansion of the universe, galaxies do behave as if there was more matter in them than that which we can see.

>Until there is some actual observation

This is all based on observations, it's literally phenomenology at this point.

>as a regular reader

You're why I hate pop-sci, you're given just enough information to think you know something but you don't. I bet you're one of those people who hates string theory even though it's the most natural extention of qft.

>To bring this up in scientific discussion "muh math" is just not science.

Please, just stop, this is embarrassing. Mathematics is needed to understand physics, I'd love to see you do QM without it.

[Anonymous No.7411149]

>>7411084

Why are you bringing up QM? QM doesn't need to fudge imaginary thingamagiggers to work. I understand the maths, I'm just tired of undergrads marching around like babby-Kelvins thinking that physics is a done deal and that maths is anything more than a descriptive tool.

[Anonymous No.7411157]

>>7411084
>Because they are facts, there is an energy driving the expansion of the universe, galaxies do behave as if there was more matter in them than that which we can see.

You see there you go extrapolating the model into reality. The truth is that observation is different than predicted by the model. It can be either because there's some otherwise undetectable matter and energy permeating the cosmos; perhaps, the model does work with this hypothesis. Or it could be that the model is just plain wrong. But you draw the implied observation in context of the accepted model as a fact. Not really scientific method.

[Anonymous No.7411164]

>>7411157
> "you can no nufin"

I'm out.

[Anonymous No.7411174]

>>7408344
That's stupid.

Do you know what gobbelygook is? No? Are you prepared to debate with me the nature of gobbelygook? No, you aren't, because I just now made that word up and therefore you have no idea what the term entails. Trying to debate about something you don't know about is no different from debating about literally made up words. The average self-proclaimed philosopher nowadays is totally willing to try arguing or making deductions when fed literal gibberish though, because they really think they're that clever.

Obviously not everyone needs to be Einstein, and philosophy does have a place in science, but if your only claim on the subject is some philosophical bullshit you thought up while pacing around starbucks, you might as well just not talk.

>>7410983
That's not sophism, that's just dodging retards. He's not saying he's right for getting them to squabble, he's just doing it because he wants to.

>>7411157
>If I use the word hypothesis like bill nye I'll look cool!

[Anonymous No.7411177]

>>7411174
>>If I use the word hypothesis like bill nye I'll look cool!
no, parent is right. Dark Matter is only the leading idea as to what's happening. But it is by no means a done deal. I doubt that the idea is wrong (though there is no idea what it is and so that just makes people guess mathematically) but it could be wrong. It's not something that we have experimentally tested to the same level as QED.

[Anonymous No.7411181]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QS4uVniwY4o

[Anonymous No.7411205]

>>7411177
There's so much retardation in this post it's hard to know where to start, nevertheless I'll give it a shot.

>Dark Matter is only the leading idea as to what's happening.

It's also the only one that accounts for all of the observed evidence.

>But it is by no means a done deal

No shit

>but it could be wrong

Literally every theory/hypothesis in science could be wrong since we can only test to certain limits.

> It's not something that we have experimentally tested to the same level as QED.

Why the fuck would you think cosmology could be tested to the same accuracy as QED? The best we can do is create simulations that reproduce the universe with parameters that are constrained by observation, guess what, <span class="math">\Lambda-CDM[/spoiler] produces the most accurate simulation of the universe.

[Anonymous No.7411210]

>>7411205
You point out some good flaws in my post. You are right that it is the only one that accounts for the evidence, but this runs us into the unified theory problem. Unless we can detect the particle, does it exist? You can give me example of neutrinos that were thought impossible to detect but the facts were even more obvious than this.

Look, I don't think the Dark Matter Hypothesis is wrong, though it might lead to some odd conclusions since LHC hasn't found Supersymmerty yet. I just don't think there is a reason to say people who are following different ideas of gravity are completely wrong. A lot of times discoveries happen in investigating something the 'wrong' way, as in the unconventional way.

[Anonymous No.7411240]

>>7408333
>casually discussing theoretical physics
What did you expect? That they suck your dick because you are so clever? Admire you for being such a refined gentlemen?

You are as bad as them for being a pretentious attentionwhore. Especially since you probably are some undergrad who overidentifies with his subject.

[Anonymous No.7411253]

>>7411063
>as long as your maths and final answer works out.
works out what ?

most physicists are applied physicists and do not care beyond whatever their computer outputs as a number.

For those in theoretical research, interpretation matters, since your work, your mathematical works, what you encode in maths and the mathematical output of the deductive work must be understood in natural language, that is to say, must be interpreted.


but you seem to be an undergrad, so will learn this in a few years.

[Anonymous No.7411286]

>>7409773
>instead of precisely explaining that the force if attraction is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance between them multiplied by each of their masses
this is not math, that is still pure physics

like you said, math is just a choice of logic, a choice of axioms and then deriving theorems. Nothing to do with the activity of a physicist who cast whatever beginning of his study into math, using mathematical semantics and syntax, and apply either a weak form of deduction in substituting a variable into an equation, to get a new equation, or apply a stronger form of deduction where this time broader fields of maths are connected, through some equations or diagrams, from an intuition of the physicist.

once more, maths is just a derivation of theorems to get a theory, theory in the sense of logic.

to do physics, you need some rules of inferences and rules of syntax+ some intuitions encoded in the syntax of your logic, and this encoding will belong to some mathematical field, where other concepts derived by the mathematician will be useful [especially if the intuition of the physicist is adequate]. => there is no maths in physics.

[Anonymous No.7411330]

>>7411063
>>7409816
>It uses mathematics heavily, but you need to know what you are doing calling things "particle" or "trajectory" and how those things relate to the real world. It's a bit more than just abstract math.

[Anonymous No.7411338]

This thread is pretty mean.
I haven't taken math since pretty calc in high school and I fucking love science and physics

[Anonymous No.7411356]

>>7411286
>this is not math, that is still pure physics

Lol what is "pure physics"?
This is so outlandish and off-topic. Physics and maths aren't mutually exclusive.
From a mathematical view physical laws can be taken as axioms then you work with them as maths. From a scientific view you accept physical laws as good models for our universe by looking at empirical evidence.

When lay people at a party say that they don't need maths to understand theoretical physics and quantum mechanics they mean that they think they can understand theoretical physics without knowing precisely what a spherical harmonic is, or a laplacian.

You could if you really wanted to precisely explain these things verbally explaining imprecise detail every symbol and condition and piece of jargon as you went along, and if you did that it would be mathematically equivalent to just learning the whole thing with conventional symbols.

But that is not what these people have in mind when they say that they ca understand QM and theoretical physics without knowing the maths. What they really mean is that they can understand QM and theoretical physics by learning a version of physics where all the precision and detail is glossed over just to present relationships in a very basic form using relationships that lay-people encounter in everyday life like "is proportional to" "___ increases as ___increases" or "does not depend on", which is what michio kaku and Neal degrasse Tyson and other physicists do when giving lectures to the general public or writing pop science books for them. These kinds of simplified, inaccurate explanations are enough to confer some understanding of some things but that is only a very low level of understanding.

[Anonymous No.7411364]

>>7411071
>and that's what good philosophers are good at teasing out.

No they aren't.
If the physical evidence is ambiguous and physicists can create multiple interpretations that all predict the same behaviour that is consistent with later physical experiment then there's no special knowledge a philosopher can come with and say "I divine that this interpretation in particular is the correct one!!"

Are you really so desperate for philosophy to be relevant that you have to make such fanciful claims ?

[Anonymous No.7411372]

>>7411253
Works out correctly.

>For those in theoretical research, interpretation matters, since your work, your mathematical works, what you encode in maths and the mathematical output of the deductive work must be understood in natural language, that is to say, must be interpreted.
Can you illustrate and justify this claim with an example of a theoretical physics research group which insists on its team members using one interpretation over another because it leads to a physical difference?

[Anonymous No.7411443]

The whole debate is just time dependant.
Back in time, philosophy was enough to discribe certain principles, nowdays in not, its just time consuming.

You can understand it without knowing math, but you can not use it practically (solve problems).

[Anonymous No.7411466]

> http://www.amazon.com/Infinitesimal-Dangerous-Mathematical-Theory-Shaped/dp/0374534993

/thread

[Anonymous No.7411782]

>>7411205

>muh cosmological constant

Dark matter can only be accepted as valid once someone actually describes what it is. Until then, it's a fudge.

[Anonymous No.7411787]

>>7410094
Typical philosophical tactic: when some fact is inconvenient, change the definition but don't re-evaluate the statements underlying it.

Math is not philosophy. Measurement of physical processes is not philosophy. Deal with it.

[Anonymous No.7411796]

>>7411205

I'm open to the idea of dark matter, but really the way you crow on about it is literally the retardation of science. Can you see no fault in a theory which requires the majority of the universe to be some unknown, unobservable magic number? It may be that the substance(s) is detected one day, but to preach it as fact at this stage is a joke.

There's a lot of horsepower being burned on what may well be a red-herring, and that the current understanding of gravity is just plain wrong. Can you not accept that?

[Anonymous No.7411812]

>>7409685
>Understanding a consequences of physics is not the same thing as understanding physics

What is there to physics other than the consequences?

[Anonymous No.7411813]

>>7411205
>It's also the only one that accounts for all of the observed evidence.

Except the bit where it fails to account for 95.1% of the matter and energy which can't be observed because they're "dark".

[Anonymous No.7411832]

>>7411813
Define 'account'. Galaxy spinning speed is pretty fucking conctete evidence.

[Anonymous No.7411833]

This thread reminds me of the fascinating book "Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons and Alternative Theories of Everything." A study on outsider theorists and philosophers who are frustrated by (rightly) being not taken seriously by mainstream science. But the book also puts forth some intersting observation of mainstream string-theory at the time which was so outlandish it made the outsider stuff look tame, yet was accepted as canonical by many physicists. String theory has since been shown to be scientifically useless, ironically via philosophical reasoning.

[Anonymous No.7411836]

>>7411832

What is it then, other than a constant jammed in to make the maths work? You see? The maths describes NOTHING other than the maths.

[Anonymous No.7411841]

>>7411782
Partially yeah, "What is the nature if dark matter" the main problem with the hypothesis. That said things like neutrinos were still used in theoretical physics long before they were directly observed.

>>7411813
No moron, dark matter is the hypothesis not an observation.

[Anonymous No.7411856]

>>7411836
>Model doesn't fit reality
>Alter the model to fit reality
>"Durr yur just fudging to make the mafs work"

You do realise this is how science works, right? We create a model, observe, then alter the model if the observation fails. If this was back in the sixties then you'd be spewing your uneducated opinion about qcd. If it was in the seventies you'd be doing the same over the GWS model "it's just a fudge for QFT", I can here it now.

[Anonymous No.7411861]

People say stupid shit all the time. As a top .0001% IQ basically everyone, even so called "smart" people seem idiotic to me. I stopped getting upset about this when I was a teenager and basically just accept that it's impossible to have an intellectual conversation with anyone. This is why I stopped interacting with human society.

[Anonymous No.7411866]

>>7411856

>the model is modified to pretend that reality is made out of "stuff" that's not observable
>problem solved

[Anonymous No.7411872]

>>7411841

The poster upthread is who implied that dark matter is observed.

[Anonymous No.7411881]

>>7411866
>Meanwhile on 4chan in 1661
>"Robert Boyle seeks to tell us that all of God's matter is created from that which is too small to see, his so-called atom, naught but an Idea given too much flight"

[Anonymous No.7411885]

>>7411872
No he did not, your reading comprehension is truly appalling. He clearly said that dark matter is a hypothesis that explains all of the current evidence.

[Anonymous No.7411895]

>>7411856
> model (conservation of energy) does not fit reality (galaxies accelerating aeay from each other )
>alter model to fit reality (therefore we will assume that conservation of energy is still correct despite not fitting reality in light of this new evidence and instead assume that there is a magical and undetectable source of 'dark energy' that is being converted to kinetic energy.

Amazing how little self-awareness you have.

[Anonymous No.7411900]

>>7411895
>> model (conservation of energy)

Wow, you don't even know where the idea of dark energy comes from, do you. Protip, the model in question isn't "conservation of energy", which isn't even a fucking model.

[Anonymous No.7411901]

>>7411174
Hardly the same thing lol

[Anonymous No.7411910]

>>7411861
> This is why I isolated myself from society and turned to 4chan.
lel

[Anonymous No.7411919]

>>7411861
So you came to 4chan...

[Anonymous No.7411925]

>>7411910
>>7411919

I only come here every once in a while

[Anonymous No.7411930]

>>7411925
Whatever you say...

[Anonymous No.7411932]

>>7411925

faggot

[Anonymous No.7411964]

>>7408333

I'm a guy who really enjoys philosophy and science, i'm terrible at math. Right now i'm making my way though the book "Fabric of the universe" by Brain Greene. I can understand physics and QM in the sense that I can read these descriptions and understand the concepts that the author is trying to convey. I understand that at the base level you can't really grasp it without a deep understanding of the math behind it. So I guess I can intuitively understand a detailed explanation given by an expert, but that doesn't mean I really know how the hell it actually works. However you won't catch me seriously trying to posit my own theories and explanations like i'm some kind of expert, because I know i'm not. Besides that, it's not exactly a brilliant revelation that a large section of our population is made up of complete morons. This is nothing new.

[Anonymous No.7412022]

>>7411925
Well I'm top .00001% IQ. You sound thoroughly unintelligent to me, to be honest.

[Anonymous No.7412029]

>>7408333
the real question is, why do you converse with said people? are you just as bad as them?

[Anonymous No.7412034]

>>7411900
>implying dark energy wasn't fabricated in order to maintain the theory of conservation of energy (yes, I'm aware that this is a specific consequence of Noether's theorem but I'm not so pretentious that I'm going to say Noether's theorem rather than be precise.

[Anonymous No.7412035]

>>7412022

no, you isolated yourself from society because you were unable to empathise with others and having a high IQ is something you can quantify, which makes you feel better than everyone else.

[Anonymous No.7412067]

>>7412034
>Conservation of energy
>theory

So we've gone from conservation of energy being a model to a theory? Keep digging anon, we can still see your head.

[Anonymous No.7412106]

>imply a coin doesn't have two sides

[Anonymous No.7412250]

>>7411364
>"I divine that this interpretation in particular is the correct one!!"

you completely changed my meaning. I said their skills are better suited to that than physicist who are taught to shut up and do the math. That is true

[Anonymous No.7412835]

>>7411964
>but that doesn't mean I really know how the hell it actually works.

'' actually works'' means what?

[Anonymous No.7412848]

>>7412035
>I'm a Special snowflake
K

[Anonymous No.7413100]

What is maths without the philosophy? As shown in this thread, focussing on the maths alone produces a tautology where the maths works therefore the maths works. Maths didn't produce dark matter and dark energy, that is a philosophical extrapolation of a mathematical model; maths certainly does not explain what dark matter is, nor does it even explain the nature of gravity.

Any 7/10 OP pretty gud troll.

[Anonymous No.7413111]

>>7413100
>As shown in this thread, focussing on the maths alone produces a tautology where the maths works therefore the maths works
Nobody has claimed that

Is strawmanning central to philosophy?

[Anonymous No.7413183]

>>7413111
Infact proper reasoning and recognising fallacious arguments is part of Logic, which is Philosophy.

[Antonio Chippler No.7413185]

>>7413111
yes

[Anonymous No.7413237]

>>7412067
>hiding behind semantics.
All accepted theorems , theories and 'laws' in physics are just models. If we somehow had access to energy levels or levels of precision or small timescales 10^50 times greater than we do now we would in all likelihood attain evidence that shows that all or nearly all of our theorems and laws need amending.

Hiding from the point like this just makes you look like a coward.

[Anonymous No.7413283]

>>7413237
>All accepted theorems , theories and 'laws' in physics are just models.

The terminology isn't helpful: "laws" are treated as immutable fact when in reality the overall picture is far from clear. The word should be "dogma."

If one were to present an experiment that violated the speed of light, or causality, or some other accepted law the first reaction is for a chorus of Kelvins to screech about it breaking the law without even looking at the experiment. Take for example the recent meme drive which was under non-stop assault even while experimenters were replicating the experiment, for no other reason than it rustled the maths.

Maths has become decoupled from experiment with the excuse that "all the easy stuff is done" thus leaving theorists to run riot with the maths which in lieu of experiment is no better than philosophical chit-chat.

[Anonymous No.7413353]

>>7413237
>Words can mean what ever I want them to mean.

You're retarded. Anyway you want the point delt with directly, fine. A basic statement of Noether's theorem is that if a Lagrangian has some symmetry then it also has a conservation law associated with that symmetry, so conservation of energy would mean that the Lagrangian is constant in time, now look at the universe, its rate of expansion is increasing, ergo it is not constant in time, there for has no conservation law associated with it.

[Anonymous No.7413361]

>>7413353
>its rate of expansion is increasing,
no, our data from our instruments are interpreted in the model as an expansion .

[Anonymous No.7413376]

>>7413361
>Direct evidence of expansion is not evidence of expansion

I just don't know what to say to this, you're basically a creationist at this point. Keep denying the evidence, I'm sure that'll prove you right.

[Anonymous No.7413448]

>>7413376
there is no justification to say that science talks about the reality.

science and models are not connected to ''reality'', [unless you are able to prove this by science itself], they just spout out some predictions which are more or less accurate, once verified later on.

[Anonymous No.7413497]

>>7413353

>le ad hominem

[Anonymous No.7413503]

>>7413376

Hey buddy, if you're going to sling insults you would do well to not be so dogmatic about cosmology, which time and again gets a kick in the ass. For example:

>Roger Penrose: inflation isn’t falsifiable, it’s falsified… BICEP did a wonderful service by bringing all the Inflation-ists out of their shell, and giving them a black eye.

[Anonymous No.7414160]

Haven't read the entire thread, but a lot of you sound just as ignorant as you think the guys OP was talking about are.
The only necessity for science is logic. Math is formalized logic and so it helps a great deal.

That being said, some of our theories are purely mathematical, and so yes math IS required to understand those.
But that's not true in general of every aspect of theoretical physics.

As an example I'd like to point out that Faraday contributed to Electromagnetism with his "Lines of force" without any formal knowledge of mathematics.

In short, OP is correct since he specifically mentioned QM, which requires mathematics to understand. But he would not be correct in general.

[Anonymous No.7414250]

>>7411796
It sucks, but live with it. Wolfgang Pauli hated the idea too, but he's the one who invented the idea of the neutrino, thinking it would never be detected. It took about 70 years but was finally detected. Dark Matter is the same. Just because there is more of it doesn't mean it's a fudge, there is more evidence than simple rotation speeds, look at the bullet cluster.

[Anonymous No.7414265]

>>7412034
conservation of energy doesn't have to apply to the universe as a whole, it only applys to closed systems.

[Anonymous No.7414304]

>>7414160

Uh the only necessity for science is experimental results. No real world result, NOT SCIENCE!

[Anonymous No.7414903]

>>7411787
You should probably read Gödel, Escher, Bach

[Anonymous No.7414940]

>>7411787
The problem seems to be that you have an incorrect definition of what constitutes philosophy.

[Anonymous No.7414985]

>>7414940
There you go, changing the definitions again....

[Anonymous No.7414999]

>>7414985
What was the definition changed from and to?

[Anonymous No.7415033]

>>7414250

The neutrino is discrete and defined. Dark matter and energy is just a nebulous handwave.

[Anonymous No.7415042]

>>7415033
>Doesn't realise the neutrino is an example of hot dark matter

Ha, pleb.

[Anonymous No.7415088]

>>7415042

>extrapolation is equivalent to evidence

[Anonymous No.7415178]

>>7414999
Just fuck off already, philosophy is a pseudoscience

[Anonymous No.7415190]

>>7415178
philosophy is not a science

science is science

be more rigorous

[Anonymous No.7415208]

>>7415178

How is maths without experimental evidence any different to philosophical whimsy?

[Anonymous No.7415236]

>>7415208
In math you can prove things without the need for experimental evidence using formal logic, in philosophy what can you prove? did anyone ever prove anything? And btw i'm not saying philosophy is inferior, but that it's just a different thing

[Anonymous No.7415245]

>>7415236
Logic is part of philosophy mate

[Anonymous No.7415250]

>>7415245
yeah... everything is philosophy mate, you can't even define it..

[Anonymous No.7415252]

Here's the secret OP, philosophy is fine. Philosophers are full of shit.

[Anonymous No.7415254]

>>7415236
>formal logic
formal logic stems from intuition about reasonings

do you think that the modus ponens came to us form something else than experience ?

>>7415236
>in philosophy what can you prove? did anyone ever prove anything?


what does ''to prove means'' in philosophy ?

philosophers have their axioms, their logical system and then they derive theorems. But all of this using natural language, so OBVIOUSLY more vagueness and circularity than in formal languages.

People will follow the reasonings of the philosophers wherewith they have affinities beforehand. But even those who follow the reasonings, people can still disagree or do not care or agree with the relevance of the philosophy of the philosopher that they chose to study

[Anonymous No.7415260]

>>7415250
Here's a definition buddy: Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language.

[Anonymous No.7415270]

>>7415236
>prove things without the need for experimental evidence

NOT SCIENCE.

[Anonymous No.7415274]

>>7415254
>fomal loigc stems from intuition about reasonings

that's true but i think that with formal logic and math we kinda went beyond pure intuition and started to set some things in stone and started to build from that

>>7415254
>People will follow the reasonings of the philosophers wherewith they have affinities beforehand. But even those who follow the reasonings, people can still disagree or do not care or agree with the relevance of the philosophy of the philosopher that they chose to study

that's my point: in philosophy you can choose which one to follow and you can agree or disagree etc... in math you can't choose, a theorem is a theorem and you can't do anything about it

[Anonymous No.7415281]

>>7415260
as i said: everything is philosophy

>>7415270
yeah that's science mate, the only pure science, other "sciences" are just: try to do this, try to repeat the result, if the result is the same assume that you are right, because that's the only thing you can do, you can't do infinite experiments

[Anonymous No.7415286]

>>7415274
>that's my point: in philosophy you can choose which one to follow and you can agree or disagree etc... in math you can't choose, a theorem is a theorem and you can't do anything about it


in math, you choose your logic, you choose your field of study, you choose the axioms for your field of study. Then you derive plenty of theorems.
A mathematician will agree or disagree on your choice of logic, on your field of study, on the axioms that you take at the beginning of your study.

In philosophy, it is the same, once you fix a logic, the field of study and the axioms, you are bound to get the theorems, precisely because you still rely on inference rules from the chosen logic [even though it is in natural language, like the greeks did or even today]. there is nothing to choose.
>>7415274
>i think that with formal logic and math we kinda went beyond pure intuition and started to set some things in stone and started to build from that


illustrate this please. What things do you have in mind ?

[Anonymous No.7415293]

>>7415286
>illustrate this please. What things do you have in mind ?

i had in mind what you said: we set axioms, which we don't need to prove and then we started to derive theorems

>In philosophy, it is the same, once you fix a logic, the field of study and the axioms, you are bound to get the theorems

i understand the parallelism you made, but if that's true, what kind of theorems have been derived?

[Anonymous No.7415305]

>>7415281

Nope. Without real-world confirmation, maths is just an abstract throught exercise: philosophy in a different language.

[Anonymous No.7415307]

>>7415293
>what kind of theorems have been derived?
look up the works of Spinoza
he applies the mathematical formulation of axioms, definitions, lemmas and theorems to his work. Many literary persons are not able to follow him, because they dislike the form of his work.

But even in literary works, the theorems are here, but not stated and trimmed as a theorem. Reminder that theorem is just a sentence at the end of a sequence of derivation of formulas/sentences.

[Anonymous No.7415309]

the work of aristotle is also good, since he invented the aristotelician logic. Very clear . For instance, his theory of physics.

[Anonymous No.7415318]

>>7415305
sure, but i'm talking about science usefulness...

>>7415307
>look up the works of Spinoza
i'll do that :)

>
But even in literary works, the theorems are here, but not stated and trimmed as a theorem. Reminder that theorem is just a sentence at the end of a sequence of derivation of formulas/sentences.

maybe they are there but i still prefer to see the full formal reasoning because i think that that's what really separates stating some good ideas you have and actually proving something

[Anonymous No.7415355]

>>7415318

To an extent, but you cannot generalize when you end up with garbage like superstring theory.

[Anonymous No.7415474]

>>7415318
>maybe they are there but i still prefer to see the full formal reasoning because i think that that's what really separates stating some good ideas you have and actually proving something

to actually prove something is really phony.
-you either take the logical approach : your proofs is just the derivation of sentences after sentences, in accordance with some inference rules.
**the inference rules are build on intuition, generally people will say that ''this rule makes sense'' [without knowing ''to make sense'' means], or even worse '' this rule is necessary/it cannot be otherwise''
**you go from one sentence to another one by pure syntaxical manipulation, in substituting a variable with another one
=> there is no intuition here [but there are in the definition of the syntax]
** you go from one sentence to another one through intuition, without the overformal syntaxical manner.

I wonder whether every proof reduces to some syntaxic manipulation. I think so, at least for the proofs encoded in algorithm for the computer.

In natural language, where you have the logical arrow => [to imply], just like in FOL, we have something like this

we have A, A=>B and in assuming the modus ponens, we get B.

But the question is : how to prove A=>B. What does it mean that A implies B ? Beyond some syntaxic manipulation, To me, it always come down to intuition [or worse, intuition justified as a necessity, for those loving the excluded middle and modalities].

If you take these implications,
>If Larry is sick, then he will be absent.
>If Larry is absent, then he will miss his classwork.
>Therefore, if Larry is sick, then he will miss his classwork.

[Anonymous No.7415477]

>>7415474


all the ''then'' [especially in the first two], must be justified/proven. The question is thus, how do we prove that
>If Larry is sick, then he will be absent

this implication makes more or less sense to more or less people.

it is exactly what happens in each philosophy of each philosopher. We have more or less intuitions about the sentences of the form A=>B, but, at some points, there will be an implication that we will not follow, that we will not agree with, that we will not an intuition of, that will not agree with our perception thus far.

Just like in math, but math puts as much intuition as possible on the logical side, at the beginning, with the definition of what a proof is, what a valid inference rule is and so on. There is also the intuition about axioms. But if every math proof reduces to a syntaxic manipulation, it remains not reasonable to say that there is no intuition and philosophy is rubbish.


philosophy has it worse, since humanity puts much ontology in the natural language. In maths, all you care about is the relations between the concepts: in set theory, you do not ask what a set is, but what other sets we can construct.
Whereas with the natural languages, humans tend to ask the definition of every terms employed. For instance, in
>If Larry is sick, then he will be absent

[Anonymous No.7415481]

>>7415477

trolls love to ask
>what to be sick means ?
>what to be absent means ?
>what to be means ?
>what is Larry ?

so the natural languages must deal with the will from the humanity to put meaning on/into words PLUS the relation between the words.

for the natural languages, we have two levels of intuitions: the one of the definition of each words, then the intuition about their relations with the other words, especially the relation => encoding the causes or reasons to go from one sentence A to another one B.

The conclusion of all this is that intuition is what motivates to go from one sentence to another one, in formal or natural language. But it appears that each persons share more or less her intuitions with others, through space and time. So there is plurality in philosophy than in math, but not much more.

The question is always to the same ''what is to know ?'' ''how to jump from one knowledge to another one ?,'' but the most important one is ''why do we want to jump form one sentence to another one?''


for those who care, there is a course on proof theory and type theory, category theory and so on

http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/summerschool/summer12/curriculum.html

with the videos on their youtube channel far lighter to download.

[Anonymous No.7415802]

>>7415481
speaking of types. The constructive type theory uses the distinction by KANT of analytical and synthetic judgements.


with synthetic = existential à la intuitionist logic


But all the undergrads on \sci\ will never understand that philosophy and and logic maths are closely tied.

[Anonymous No.7417390]

ok

[Anonymous No.7417679]

>>7408333
>mathematicians often make mistakes
My math teacher in high school (he had math phd) said that the reason that everything had to be proved rigorously was so that we wouldn't have any contradictions in the future. Doesn't that mean that mathematicians don't make mistakes, because they have to have a rigorous proof for everything?

[Anonymous No.7417813]

>>7417679
what do you call mistake ?

also, your math teacher works with ZFC, so he has nothing on non-contradiction

[Anonymous No.7417822]

>>7408333
...well technically you don't OP. I have a laymens book on theoretical physics which is quite good.

[Anonymous No.7417835]

>>7417822

my fucking god, just kill yourself

[Anonymous No.7417840]

technically there are 2 parts to theoretical physics . the math part which is justification and the model part that any idiot can grasp as its explained in terms that relate to 3 dimensional space

the math is sometimes a little off . remember string theory ? the math seemed right to a large portion of the scientific community at the time

[Anonymous No.7417854]

>>7408333
Science without math is just memorizing facts that people who understand the math have discovered.

[Anonymous No.7417917]

>>7417840
>string theory
>the math seemed right to a large portion of the scientific community at the time

[Anonymous No.7417940]

>>7413353
>>7414265
>now look at the universe,

galaxies accelerating for no detectible reason are not the whole universe. each of them is a system which is gaining kinetic energy by accelerating away from each other, and yet there is no evidence of them gaining energy from anything.

This is clearly evidence against conservation of energy an nother's theorem, yet the conclusion drawn is noether's theorem must be right and instead there must be invisible and undetectable "dark energy".

[Anonymous No.7418554]

>>7417940

Is it the galaxies accelerating, or is it the space between them expanding. Perhaps conservation of energy is a red-herring in this context, that being space itsel is expanding.

[Anonymous No.7418580]

>/sci/ is too retarded to realize philosophy gave birth to math and science

[Anonymous No.7418603]

>>7411157
>You see there you go extrapolating the model into reality.
That is the opposite of what is happening.

"Huh, observations show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate."
"This doesn't fit our model!"
"Lets change the model to account for this."
"We'll call this unobservable mass 'dark matter'."

[Anonymous No.7418618]

>>7418603
How it works:
>Scientists create a model
>Model describes reality quite well
>Retards on the internet collectively yell "Science doesn't know everything"

A few years pass

>New data shows some divergence from the model
>Model is altered, or even replaced, to fit the new evidence
>Retards on the internet collectivity yell "That's just a fudge, science doesn't know anything".

[Anonymous No.7418791]

>>7408342
>>7408333
That sucks, hasn't happened to me. I'm friends with a lot of english majors, but most have taken calculus and generally they all have respect for the stuff.

>>7408343
Hey man Feynman did acid, ketamine, and weed. And Erdös did amphetamines... I guess that is kinda bad. And most of the early QM guys drank a lot, but that's alcohol though.
Wait do you mean 90% of the time they're high? Because I agree that that's dumb.

[Anonymous No.7418804]

I think modern physics is too complicated for normal people to understand. We might think we do, but all the explanations you hear in your high school class / tv shows seem really simplified and pointless without knowing it in full detail.

[Anonymous No.7418887]

>>7418804
Well how modern? Relativity is weird, but it can be explained pretty well without math from what I've learned, and the math behind special relativity could be taught to anyone who understands algebra. Quantum and particle shit I agree, it doesn't really make sense in any non-mathematical way.

[Anonymous No.7418900]

I once tried to view theoretical physics that way but even then my mind blanked off and had to refer to math for there to be support of these theories

Physics = the study of all natural phenomenas accuring in this universe (or multiverse)

Go study and understand yhose natural phenomenas we need math

Tell those philosphers they dun goofed

Sorry for the bad english typing on retsrded samsung

[Anonymous No.7418906]

Studying physics without math is like studying Shakespeare without knowing English

[Anonymous No.7418943]

Well, math can be kind of split up into two catagories.

The math that engineers, most scientists, finance analysts, etc. use isn't proof-based math. They might use therums, formulae and algorithms from proof-based math, and they might indeed make mistakes.

Then there is proof-based math. Here, there is only "correct statements". For example, pythagorean therum is true because we have a proof for it. There is no chance for a "mistake", because mathematical proofs are ALWAYS absolute.

Now then, whether or not you can do science without math. Math is very broad. It covers quantities to logic itself. If you represent any universe model formally, you're already using math.

[Anonymous No.7418946]

>>7418943
I sohuld add, you can make a mistake in a proof. But you always present the proof with the therum. Hence, you verify it first hand before you know the therum.

This is the best humans can ever do in terms of being "mistakelessness", in that the verifiability is always availible.

[Anonymous No.7418978]

>get maths degree
>100k starting
>all the pussy I want

Seriously, have none of you aspies considered conceptual explanation is superior to formulaic analysis in many instances, especially when attempting to convey basic meanings?
Of course not, because muh autism.

[Anonymous No.7419056]

>>7417679
You just don't want to go building on top of things that could be incorrect. A rigorous proof is to convince everyone that the result is okay to build on.

[Anonymous No.7419251]

>>7418906

Conversely, discussing physics without philosophy is like performing Shakespeare without knowing English.

[Anonymous No.7419268]

>>7418943
>>Then there is proof-based math. Here, there is only "correct statements".

"correct statements". according to some rule chosen arbitrarily

[Anonymous No.7419271]

>>7418618
>>Model describes reality quite well
no the models outputs predictions

their is no evidence to suggest that models describe anything