Is math "massless"?

[Jim_Baur]

Is math “massless”?

Is math beyond the domain that physical science has placed upon itself?

Is logic “massless”?

Is reason “massless”?

Is human thought “massless”?

Do we know the essence of gravity?

Can we get the the noumenon of gravity?

THANKS!

This is food for my thought!

THANKS!

 

[bmonk]

My understanding of math–as an amateur–is that math is found in the symmetries and quantifications (etc.) of the world, but not in the substance of the world. As such, math itself has no mass–it is pure ideas.

Whether math as though in the mind of a person is massless is another question–it depends on whether thoughts have mass. Apparently, to the best of our current scientific measurements, such thoughts do not in themselves have mass, any more than the soul or spirit has mass. If so, then math as thought still has no mass.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Is math “massless”?

Is math beyond the domain that physical science has placed upon itself?

Is logic “massless”?

Is reason “massless”?

A materialist would reply that reason, math and logic are functions of the brain’s mass.

Math, for example, is associated with right brain dominance.

There’s no doubt that our ability to think is associated with brain mass.

A stone has no brain mass and therefore cannot think.

The problem for the materialist is to treat thought as a noun when it acts like a verb.

You can observe the Pythagorean Theorem as it mentally unfolds, but you can’t dissect it on a table.

Does the Pythagorean Theorem belong in the material world, or does it belong in the spirit world?

Or does it belong in both worlds simultaneously?

Is the Pythagorean Theorem eternally true, or is it only true so long as it resides in the brain?

Food for thought!

 

[Jim_Baur]

I have always held the opinion that math is a creation of the human intellect.

It, in my judgment, does not have extra-mental existence.

If all humans were to pass away, then math is gone.

If math is gone with human reasoning, then math cannot be that which runs the material matter.

This is from a strictly philosophical point of view.

If one brings a divine being into the mix, then we got something else.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I have always held the opinion that math is a creation of the human intellect.

It, in my judgment, does not have extra-mental existence.

If all humans were to pass away, then math is gone.

If math is gone with human reasoning, then math cannot be that which runs the material matter.

This is from a strictly philosophical point of view.

If one brings a divine being into the mix, then we got something else.

Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter:

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”



I think it is because God is a mathematician that math would exist even if we did not.

That is, the universe would exist according to certain formulas even if we were not around to observe them. When we finally did come around, we were able to observe them because they already existed in the mind of God.

 

[onceablasphemer]

Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter:

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”



I think it is because God is a mathematician that math would exist even if we did not.

That is, the universe would exist according to certain formulas even if we were not around to observe them. When we finally did come around, we were able to observe them because they already existed in the mind of God.

Good points. Did God use math or is math a human way of gaining a glimpse into His thought process?

 

[Jim_Baur]

Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter:

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”



Do they say how?

THANKS!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Charlemagne III;12082628:

Do they say how?

THANKS!

I guess to know that you’d have to be God!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Good points. Did God use math or is math a human way of gaining a glimpse into His thought process?

We are told God made us in his image and likeness. Great minds think alike!

 

[Beryllos]

Planets do not perform calculations to stay in their orbits. They just do it by their nature. They follow the only course they can. I think mathematics is merely our language for describing the nature of things. If (or when) humans pass away, the world will keep on turning.

Other beings may have their own representation of mathematics, either more or less advanced according to their natural abilities. For example, some birds can count, or so I’ve read.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Whether or not math necessarily has a mass associated with it I cannot say. Materialists, particularly connectionists in neuroscience, would say that the mind is a function of the brain’s connections (a view I disagree with), and that since math is a function of the mind, it is necessarily a function of the brain’s connections. A connectionist would avow that anything that can be shown to be a function of connections can be emulated by a digital computer, and that a digital computer can only store information via digital entropy, which has as an upper limit of information density (a limit to computation) something called the Bekenstein bound. Thus it might be said that a limit to mathematics is the Bekenstein bound, or that encoding mathematical information necessarily obeys physical laws concerning entropy.

Personally, I think there are several breaks in between math and Bekenstein bound entropy, so that that conclusion may not necessarily hold water.

1. *]The human person may (faith would avow that it does, and if that is true, then that tosses a monkey wrench into things) have a spiritual component.
   *]The brain is probably not connectionist, nor computable by a digital computer.
   *]It may be an error to think that math is truly encodable as such on a digital computer, and that the truth is that what a digital computer presents to us as math is merely “a user illusion”.
   
   Thus, I think that even though it looks like we ought to be able to say that math is part of physics, we really aren’t quite there yet (and we may never get there).

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do computers have imagination? That is, can they conceive that which has never been seen to exist?

Such as, a being of which no greater being can be conceived?

Does imagination have mass?

These question could well end this thread.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Do computers have imagination? That is, can they conceive that which has never been seen to exist?

At times, there is a very very strong user illusion that they do, and that they truly know what they are doing. It’s just a user illusion though. I have never thought that they had true imagination or that they knew what they were doing, but I was mightily impressed with some of the output from Mathematica. You haven’t seen math until you’ve seen a symbolic processor like Mathematica spit out a single formula with more megabytes in it than a book.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who has seen such things, but they usually don’t get written into people’s papers because nobody is going to wade through a mathematical formula hundreds of pages long and actually try to understand it even if it is true and correct. Instead, they will just list the differential equation which gave rise to such a lengthy result and say something that understates the situation like, " . . . and so this differential equation gives rise to a formula that is fairly unwieldy due to its size. The formula is best left as an exercise for the reader . . ."

Such as, a being of which no greater being can be conceived?

I think that’s a bridge too far for them . . . way way waaaaay too far. I don’t think they can even get to being let alone an ultimate being.

They can and do deal with infinities though, both real and complex, and again, the user illusion is very strong that they really do know what they are doing, but that user illusion can also break down and make them seem as dumb as a box of hammers.

Does imagination have mass?

I think not, but cannot prove that it does or doesn’t.

These question could well end this thread.

I think you’re correct. I think that that’s basically about as far as we can take it.

 

[Jim_Baur]

Let me ask another question.

If gravity does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

If math does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

If physical scientist will not accept those things that they cannot measure or weigh or count, should they use math (if it has no mass, then math does not exist as an object of the physical scientist)?

 

[sallybutler]

Let me ask another question.

If gravity does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

If math does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

If physical scientist will not accept those things that they cannot measure or weigh or count, should they use math (if it has no mass, then math does not exist as an object of the physical scientist)?

I think of math the same way I think if words. Math is a language. It is used to define and describe things and phenomenon.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Let me ask another question.

If gravity does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

The mass that gravity has depends on where the observer stands. If the observer is very distant, and far out in flat space away from all other disturbances, then gravity has a negative mass associated with it. This is a very vexed and complicated question though, and it leads to all sorts of intractable mathematical difficulties.

Once while Einstein and a colleague were taking a stroll, the colleague brought up the idea to Einstein that the amount of negative mass in the universe due to gravity might just be able to balance out the positive mass of all of the stars and galaxies. Einstein, standing still, was so entranced by the idea that he didn’t notice that they were in the midst of an earthquake.

On the other hand, when, for example, you are calculating the geodesics (or deriving the Christoffel symbols) of test masses that might pass an earth-like body (or even a sun-like body), gravity is just a part of the potential that enters into those parts of the linearized metric that distort space-time but have no mass.

So it just depends . . . You can’t escape actually grappling with these problems yourself in order to get a better grasp on things. As usual, you just have to ‘do the math’. That’s about all I can say.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

If math does not have mass, is it outside the domain of the physical scientists?

Not entirely; I think they have attempted to include it via complexity theory and theories about that which is physically necessary for computation, but those involve patterns without necessarily ascribing a mass to those patterns. They are not at that level of accuracy, they are just trying to get basic understanding.

 

[Pat_Albertson]

If physical scientist will not accept those things that they cannot measure or weigh or count, should they use math (if it has no mass, then math does not exist as an object of the physical scientist)?

In general, (with all due apologies to Kurt Gödel) math is not quite that self-reflexive, and where it appears in physical theory they don’t need so much accuracy that they would try to include the mass of say, a zero instead of a one in a memory chip or a magnetic disk . . . or at least not quite yet . . .

 

[bmonk]

Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter:

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”



I think it is because God is a mathematician that math would exist even if we did not.

That is, the universe would exist according to certain formulas even if we were not around to observe them. When we finally did come around, we were able to observe them because they already existed in the mind of God.

This gets back to the old philosophical debate about whether mathematicians invent or discover math. In other words, is math inherent in the structure of the universe and of logic, so that the mathematicians simply discover the symmetries and relationships, or do they actually create such things? My own tendency is on the side of discovery–perhaps because I believe that God has already done the creating the beauties of logic and math, and we simply discover the inherent rules that are already there, and make applications to what is around us.

It also explains why, say, the Solar System existed long before even life came to be on the Earth, why the natural laws of evolution and growth allowed that live to come to be. The math was already there, and the physical systems followed it by their nature–so that we could develop to the point we can come along and discover the laws that were there from the beginning of creation.

 

[ynotzap]

Food for thought: Math in philosophy is known as the second degree of abstraction,of thought by the intellect it is quantitative, Metaphysics is qualitative the third degree of abstraction. In both they are spiritual concepts understood by a spiritual faculty,the intellect, a faculty of a spiritual entity the soul. The universal truths are found in both degrees of thought (to the best of my memory)

On the light side my teacher called Math, Mental gymnastics.