Hacker News Reader

Comment by bakuninsbart | Hacker News Reader

Math isn't a science, it is a tool we can use to construct coherent arguments. We can do this about our world, which science aims to do, but we can do this about many worlds. We can consider correct deductions within a mathematical system as fact, but they do not represent facts in the "real" world.

View on HN

Elegant explanation of why I felt it didn’t belong! Thanks for writing :)

> but they do not represent facts in the "real" world.

In what sense do they not? On the assumption that there can be other "worlds" for which math, but not physics, holds?

Yes, you can make perfectly valid mathematical systems that have zero anchoring to any physical reality we experience (such as, trivially, n-dimensional geometries).

A geology that isn't anchored to our physical reality seems intrinsically invalid.

In our universe there are some number of physical constants that cannot be determined from maths alone, but only measured. If you go about changing these physical constants then we don't have physics as we know it (change 1/137 to 1/140 and electromagnetics no longer works). You get some totally different physics of which there may be nothing more complicated than hydrogen, or maybe hydrogen doesn't even exist at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant

One I always go back to: You can represent a perfect impulse (think electrical signals, a switch from 0 (low voltage) to 1 (high voltage)) mathematically, but it's impossible to physically create.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com