Empiricism thread

[Anonymous No.9901578]

What you guys think about H.L. Menckens views that mathematics is redundant in science? Here's a little taste

>Mencken also wrote a review for Sir James Jeans's book, The Mysterious Universe, in which he said that mathematics is not necessary for physics. Instead of mathematical "speculation" (such as quantum theory), Mencken believed physicists should just directly look at individual facts in the laboratory like chemists:

>"If chemists were similarly given to fanciful and mystical guessing, they would have hatched a quantum theory forty years ago to account for the variations that they observed in atomic weights. But they kept on plugging away in their laboratories without calling in either mathematicians or theologians to aid them, and eventually they discovered the isotopes, and what had been chaos was reduced to the most exact sort of order"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken#Science

[Anonymous No.9901584]

>>9901578
>check his profession, figuring he's probably a chemist shitting on physicists
>he's a professional "critic"

[Anonymous No.9901593]

>>9901584
not an argument fucking pleblet

[Anonymous No.9901609]

>>9901578
>calls Newton a brainlet for measuring infinity
>thinks "fundamental" math like addition and subtraction is all that is needed
>thinks higher math is hogwash
Clearly never took calculus or any class beyond algebra. Also this >>9901584
Sage in all fields pls

[Anonymous No.9901629]

>>9901609

This is OP. I don't agree with Mencken, and I am not trying to make pro empiricism thread. I want proper and rigorous discussion about hyper-empiricist views like Mencken, hopefully helping brainlets understand the importance of mathematics in general.

[Anonymous No.9901772]

>>9901578
>fedoras think they're science the thread

[Anonymous No.9901793]

>>9901578
Guy literally doesn't know what the word mathematics means

[Anonymous No.9901799]

>>9901578
>Math model predicts measurements decades ahead of time
>Lol bro you should've just blindly measured

[Anonymous No.9901919]

>>9901629

Abstraction is what makes observation meaningful. Meaning does not spontaneously arise from data. Without abstraction we are not able to make any sense of the data our senses collect. We constantly do this unconsciously. Mathematics is our most sophisticated method for consciously constructing such abstractions. So to reject mathematics on this level is to reject integral parts of our own consciousness.