Is every single thing and even the universe itself logical?

[elas]

 

Can any physical theory really tell you what anything is?

 

Anyway, the point is that if one wants to describe the world in an objective way that does not require any interpretation or a subjective point of view it seems that you need to use mathematics.

 

My usual reply has been made to often without any conclusive result, but at last I have found the professional explanation that covers what I have been trying to say; it is in chapter 7 of The Particle Garden by Gordon Kane. In their books, Povh, Rith, Scholz, Zetsche, Baggott, Smolin, Close and Veltman all either ignore this question (i.e. 'what is understanding') or give a short one sentence statement similar to yours, Kane makes a detailed analysis to long to quote, but well worth reading.

Edited January 28, 2011 by elas

[steevey]

So, you state the wavelength of the reflected light. If I am colour blind I would have no idea about the colour. Saying a wavelength (or frequency) gives a clear statment.

 

 

 

So we now using inequalities. Very basic and intuitive, but I would regard this as a mathematical statement.

 

 

 

 

To explain this properly you need some coordinate system. Again mathematics.

 

 

 

Can any physical theory really tell you what anything is?

 

Anyway, the point is that if one wants to describe the world in an objective way that does not require any interpretation or a subjective point of view it seems that you need to use mathematics.

 

There not "inequalities" or math of any kind. They just are what they are, and then the term "inequalities" is just our label for a particular type of situation or pattern.

 

You forget that the universe was here before the invention of math, and thus the universe has to work in some way without math in the present.

 

It maybe so that quantized values of energy and momentum (and etc.) exists, but never in reality are two apples going "1+1=2". All that's going on is one apple is getting closer to another. They aren't fusing into a larger apple with twice the mass or anything like that. Even in quantum mechanics, you have 1 particle plus 1 particle=1 particle (entanglement), which defies the logic of mathematics. Sure, you could develop an equation to more accurately describe it, but that equation doesn't mean anything unless you have information from outside that equation on what its describing or what's going on.

 

There's also the fact that theres a preference and an opinion, which can't be proven or disproven with math. "I think this ice cream tastes good". Where's the math in that? How are you going to tell me I'm wrong or even right?

Edited January 29, 2011 by steevey

[Mr Skeptic]

You forget that the universe was here before the invention of math, and thus the universe has to work in some way without math in the present.

 

I don't believe you. 1+1=2, universe or no, and it was true (with the same meanings as we now use) before anyone ever gave it any meaning. It's more accurate to say math is discovered rather than invented.

[ajb]

You forget that the universe was here before the invention of math, and thus the universe has to work in some way without math in the present.

 

Which is why I find it perplexing that mathematics can be used to such great effect in describing the universe.

 

 

"I think this ice cream tastes good". Where's the math in that? How are you going to tell me I'm wrong or even right?

 

So, you think ice cream tastes good. Maybe other people will think it tastes bad. Let suppose at least one person thinks ice cream tastes bad.

 

Then, does ice cream taste good, or does it taste bad?

 

This is not a well formulated question that everyone can (at least in principle) agree on. It is not question posed well for science.

 

What would be better is to do a survey and ask a reasonable number of people the question: "do you think ice cream tastes good?"

 

Then, we can say 75% (lets say) of people say that ice cream tastes good. Then saying ice cream tastes good has some sort of meaning we can all understand. Notice mathematics comes into play again.

Edited January 29, 2011 by ajb

[steevey]

Which is why I find it perplexing that mathematics can be used to such great effect in describing the universe.

 

It doesn't describe the universe alone though. The equations would be meaningless without outside information which isn't mathematics. I could right 1+1=2. SO, what in the universe is that describing? You don't know because you don't have non math information.

 

 

 

So, you think ice cream tastes good. Maybe other people will think it tastes bad. Let suppose at least one person thinks ice cream tastes bad.

 

Then, does ice cream taste good, or does it taste bad?

 

This is not a well formulated question that everyone can (at least in principle) agree on. It is not question posed well for science.

 

What would be better is to do a survey and ask a reasonable number of people the question: "do you think ice cream tastes good?"

 

Then, we can say 75% (lets say) of people say that ice cream tastes good. Then saying ice cream tastes good has some sort of meaning we can all understand. Notice mathematics comes into play again.

 

The poll is still just a label. In real life, how something tastes good to you is just how something tastes good to you. Doesn't matter if other people agree on it, nothing about the fact that you like ice cream changes or is derived.

Edited January 29, 2011 by steevey

[ajb]

It doesn't describe the universe alone though. The equations would be meaningless without outside information which isn't mathematics. I could right 1+1=2. SO, what in the universe is that describing? You don't know because you don't have non math information.

 

This is the interpretation, which is of course very important. But still, does not explain why mathematics is so useful.

 

 

 

The poll is still just a label. In real life, how something tastes good to you is just how something tastes good to you. Doesn't matter if other people agree on it, nothing about the fact that you like ice cream changes or is derived.

 

Right, so in the way you have stated it, this it is not something that we cannot all agree on. In science some agreement is necessary. It is the only way we will all understand each other and nature.

 

 

I claim that any way to describe this in such a way we all understand and agree on would require quantifying the "tastes good" or taking some average of the population, "i.e. most people think ice cream tastes good ". Only by using mathematics will be be able to agree. Of course, exactly what is meant by "tastes good" and how we quantify this may not be unique, but once we all agree on a definition we can make clear statements.

 

Generally, I cannot see any nice way of describing things in a clear way we all understand without mathematics. In physics one is not interested in vague statements, "the Z-boson is heavy", better to say "the Z-boson has mass 91 GeV". "The Galaxy is large", better to say "The Galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter". I hope you get my point. Even for basic statements mathematics, and in particular just numbers seem necessary in describing our universe.

[steevey]

This is the interpretation, which is of course very important. But still, does not explain why mathematics is so useful.

Ugh, mathematics itself is the patterns and systems of logic that you derive from nature itself, thats why its useful. We made up math to fit things we see around us and to more easily find patterns and predict them. The universe is something else though. It's its own thing. Mathematics is what humans made up in order to make patterns and logic out of observed data. It's not to say that everything in the universe was logical.

 

 

I claim that any way to describe this in such a way we all understand and agree on would require quantifying the "tastes good" or taking some average of the population, "i.e. most people think ice cream tastes good ". Only by using mathematics will be be able to agree. Of course, exactly what is meant by "tastes good" and how we quantify this may not be unique, but once we all agree on a definition we can make clear statements.

 

 

I don't care if anyone agrees. It tastes good to me. I don't care about some pole, taste isn't quantified to me. I don't care how it tastes to other people, it taste to me however it tastes to me. There's nothing about an opinion that requires a poll or any confirmation, thats why its an opinion. Doesn't matter if its logical for you to feel some way you do, you still feel that way.

Edited January 29, 2011 by steevey

[ajb]

Ugh, mathematics itself is the patterns and systems of logic that you derive from nature itself, thats why its useful.

 

What about very abstract mathematics that seems not to be inspired by nature? Many of these things then turn out to be exactly what physicists need.

 

 

I don't care if anyone agrees. It tastes good to me. I don't care about some pole, taste isn't quantified to me. I don't care how it tastes to other people, it taste to me however it tastes to me. There's nothing about an opinion that requires a poll or any confirmation, thats why its an opinion. Doesn't matter if its logical for you to feel some way you do, you still feel that way.

 

Yes, and my point is that if you want to remove opinion and point of view from a description of the world mathematics seems to be the way to do it.

 

This is tied into the first point: why is mathematics just so powerful in physical science? I don't think your assertion that mathematics is just abstraction from nature explains it, but it is a valid piece of this puzzle.

[Schrödinger's hat]

Ugh, mathematics itself is the patterns and systems of logic that you derive from nature itself, thats why its useful. We made up math to fit things we see around us and to more easily find patterns and predict them. The universe is something else though. It's its own thing. Mathematics is what humans made up in order to make patterns and logic out of observed data.

 

I think mathematics is more than this. I think mathematics is the name that we give to all systems of rules and interactions of patterns. Whether we invent, or reverse engineer, a system of rules it is still mathematics, and if we find the rules by which something behaves we will put that with all of the other mathematics. Even if those rules were not bound by classical logic.

 

So I think instead of mathematics being useful for describing nature, things useful for describing nature are mathematics. Were nature to follow any sort of rule, if we were to find it we would call it mathematics.

 

As to it being an incomplete representation of the universe.

We find an x that has the same properties as the object in question for the scope of our interest, but x is not the object. I have some incomplete thought linking back to representations but I'm not quite sure where I'm going here.

 

Coming back to the topic The final question is, why rules at all? Well that's a little harder. Maybe the anthropic principle? Without rules there could be no reasoning beings. This seems a little weak and I think there is more here.

Hummmm

[ajb]

Coming back to the topic The final question is, why rules at all?

 

And why are these rules mathematical?

[Schrödinger's hat]

And why are these rules mathematical?

 

Because that's how we define mathematics. Any formal explicitly defined statements or inferences made using rules are mathematics.

[Mr Skeptic]

In real life, how something tastes good to you is just how something tastes good to you. Doesn't matter if other people agree on it, nothing about the fact that you like ice cream changes or is derived.

 

There are people who work with flavors/aromas, which is much more complicated than with light because we have so many different taste/smell receptors. Likewise, there are people who study the pleasure centers of the brain. Guess what they use to describe things... All you're doing is pointing out something for which the maths describing it are far too complicated or unknown for us to talk about, but that doesn't mean that there isn't math to describe it, just that we don't understand it.

[steevey]

There are people who work with flavors/aromas, which is much more complicated than with light because we have so many different taste/smell receptors. Likewise, there are people who study the pleasure centers of the brain. Guess what they use to describe things... All you're doing is pointing out something for which the maths describing it are far too complicated or unknown for us to talk about, but that doesn't mean that there isn't math to describe it, just that we don't understand it.

 

But the the way to prove something is with proof, so it doesn't matter if there might be some hidden math somewhere in the universe to describe something, it isn't relevant unless we know for a fact that its there. Since math can't completely describe any physical object, it can't be the only thing that the universe is comprised of.

 

But, that still doesn't prove that logic itself in all its variations can't completely describe the universe.

Edited January 31, 2011 by steevey

[Schrödinger's hat]

Is not classical mechanics (for example) sufficient to describe the mechanics and dynamics of macroscopic objects?

 

Nope, if you build a machine that does a quantum experiment and reacts based on the answers by throwing a ball at your head, classical mechanics will not help you

/facetious

[steevey]

Nope, if you build a machine that does a quantum experiment and reacts based on the answers by throwing a ball at your head, classical mechanics will not help you

/facetious

 

Not only that, but even something like shining a flashlight is governed strongly by quantum mechanics. There's the fact that its a wave and then becomes determined once it hits your retina, then even before all that, the uncertainty principal is effecting it.

Edited March 6, 2011 by steevey

[Riot]

I wouldn't call it logical. Logic is something that seems correct to our diverse human minds.

 

I would call everything "mathematical" or able to be solved somehow by mathematics.