Re: Spacetime

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

>
On 2024-07-05 13:01:12 +0000, gharnagel said:

>
Mathematics is a human invention.  Basically, it's just
counting.  We count things in the real world: apples, sheep,
fingers, etc.

>
Something I found absolutely brilliant when I first read it is the
chapter in volume 1 of Feynman's Lectures on Physics, where he starts
with counting sheep and proceeds in simple understandable steps to
logarithms and Euler's identity (e^{i pi} + 1 = 0).

There ya go!  Maybe I'll have to get out my LoP and reread that.

  Anything else is frosting on the cake.
>
I like frosting (I have a degree in mathematics, so I obviously
do), but anyone who believes numbers, any number, exist as real
objects out there in the universe somewhere has bats in his belfry.

>
Well, in Wozzie's case we knew that already.

Indeed.  He has the manners of a pig.  I grew up on a farm and we often
had pigs and cows in the same corral.  When cow plop happened, the pigs
came running.  So I've had my say and I'm done with him.
In one of the trade journals, many years ago, someone wrote an article
as a Socratic dialog about a young man who was trying to decide whether
to become a mathematician or a scientist.  One of the things Socrates
tried to draw out was the student's attitude toward certainty and
uncertainty, mathematics involving more of the former.