MATH IS ABSOLUTE
But is it really? I struggle with the simplest math, and I wonder why my brain cannot grasp equations. Yet, I love shows and documentaries on Algorithms, calculating outcomes, the process of processes. Which all makes sense, until I have to try and figure something out. I have horrible math anxiety. Yet there are parts that fascinate me.
Math has a capacity to be absolute, but what you are really looking at is one category of the two categories of language: Human language, and operant language. Human languages are languages like English, French, etc. These languages are meant purely for communicating their meaning.
Operant languages are partly symbolic and calculative in nature. These are things like computer programming languages, and of course, mathematics. Everything has to be done in syntax, or things don't compute correctly.
So with math, it works like blocks of computer code. That is actually exactly how they were able to formulate the first programming languages, out of the language of math.
So what you are doing is you are trying to understand the concept and description of analysis.
Ancient greek philosophers talked about this, and I think a good way to understand an analysis is that we have some real object with real properties, but we can represent that real object as some conglomerate of a linguistic construct, which can be used to show those properties, because the mechanics of how the analysis works produce the same causes and effects that act on that real object.
Other than that, math is understood through a certain level of engagement of mind, and it has to be studied to be learned.
I never cared for math till my 40's and read a book, (can't remember the name), about Einstein and his theories. The way it explained, mathematically, the speed of light and the relation to moving and stationary objects gave me a 'Eureka' moment. I really understood how the math went to show the Theory has to be that way.
Math kind of does have that, but I don't think it's fully fleshed out. We are a long distance until we can do extremely detailed renderings with equations.
Hi Daniel,
Book recommendation: "Where Mathematics Comes From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being" by George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez. Looks at the relationship between Math and Language. I think you'll find it very interesting.
Regards,
Ralph,
London, England
It called dyscalculia and can range from anxeity to ill effects. Nausea, vomititng.. Like word dyslexia anxieties andsometimes the two crossover in some brains. It's essentially maths dyslexia caused by a different function in the short term memory developmental or genetic damage / insult / lesion / etc. Usually folks this way overcompensate in other areas. I am maths dyslexic hypergraphic and it's a larger component of Epilepsy. It can be for varying reasons. It's really fucking interesting.. With a calculator i can do anything .. without i can't do 7 yr old maths. I can't add or take away time.. I mistake numbers for other numbers and write them down wrong. I'm fucking random number generator lol .. it's caused me chaos. Comes in varying degree's. Maths is absoloute if that bit of your brain works but mine don't !!!!!! Like a few other here by sounds of it lol
@pthomas59 You are very likely dyscalculaic .. Go check it out and learn. I have worked with it in care .. I have it lol .. I self diagnosed epilepsy and forced the Medical service here in Uk to scan my brain .. I was right and have lesions in a specific area causing very definite effects equatable with other people only with epilepsy of a rare kind... I have mapped my neurology.. Go find out about it .. you may find other people having same experience and then depending on what other idiosyncrasies and little traits you have you may find out more about yourself.. Or don't lol .. up to you ..
@MrLizard People are diagnosed at school now.. In my day it wasn't known much so I was hit with sticks instead for being naughty. If you are not diagnosed at school and older in uk no funding remit. Unless you go prison then they help lol. It's all very complex but just read up about it .. best thing .. best to understand it in your own terms as it is very complex in the sense of the various things that can lead to it happening for people.
Same way here with math and advanced logic. But I pursue it because in it is perfect truth, therefore worth me figuring it out.
@Gwendolyn2018 - sounds contradictory to me. Can you explain that without getting too esoteric or metaphysical?
@pthomas59 - Maybe I'm a simpleton, but to me, math represents reality; it documents it. I have two eyes and one nose. In that way it is absolute.
Thanks for that @Gwendolyn2018 - Just to clarify something you said. "Fact can also be a slippery slope: it used to be a "fact" that the earth was the center of the universe, but science disproved that.". It wasn't fact because we know they were wrong (which is why I presume you used quotes around the word "fact".) Which - of course - is why history and science books get re-written.
I hear what you're saying about how "truths" can sometimes not be "truths". Perhaps the word is being misused, in the sense that because contradictory truths cannot exist, maybe the word should be substituted with "opinion", or "relative truth".
I'm not trying to be argumentative; just trying to pin down word meanings so that they convey the correct concepts. Perhaps where I'm coming from is more like a trial lawyer's stance, where the opposite of truth is falsehood; nothing in between.
Good discussion; makes me think....
Consider that mathematics is absolute in a very relative way. Academic disciplines, even math, cannot escape some semblance of dissonance.
It's not our fault if you don't work the particular case correctly, just FYI
"Mathematics is absolute truth only to the extent that the axioms allow it to be absolutely true, and we can never know if the axioms themselves are true, because unlike theorems which can be proved using previous theorems or axioms, axioms rest on the validity of human observation."
We don't know that once you leave the realm of Euclidean geometry, many of those axioms are useless
Lots of people have math anxiety, I used to tutor statistics in college to psyc majors who were trying to pass the one simple statistics class that was mandatory.
Math is very logical, as others pointed out, similar to computer science and logical problem solving. There are rules and syntax that you must follow. Process decomposition is necessary.
Think of a house, we all understand what a house is, but you can't just go out and start hammering boards together. You need a plan, split the tasks down to the level that most people could follow, determine the order in which they all need to happen and so on. This is process decomposition.
Higer level mathematical constructs are built from the gound up too. If you have a feel and understanding for higher level mathematical constructs, perhaps that is enough.
@PraiseXenu Axioms are assumed and can't be proven true.
I had math anxiety but had to overcome it because I had to teach it. I learned to break it down into its simpler parts; then it made sense.
One of the truths that I reached over the years was that the best math teachers were not the people to whom math concepts came easily, but those who had struggled and learned to do as I had done. They understood what students were experiencing.
Would that be the math the way kids are being taught now. I can't get more than a few steps into that before my brain nearly seizes.
Math has its basis in the concrete. Too often it is taught as abstract. Problems follow. It is one of the most useful of all our tools, but too many people forget that we have to learn to use a wrench, hammer, and screwdriver before we can build a house. I think I'm saying that too many steps are skipped in the teaching of math.
My brain goes to mush with math. Chemo damaged my calculative abilities as well as short term memory. Got as far as Algebra II in HS. Almost flunked geometry. Never got to Calculus. In college switched from Statistics to Social Theory.
I went through Calc 3 at college (also Differential Equations and DifEQ2) and I had mixed feelings about it.
On one hand, I had to drill dozens to HUNDREDS of questions to understand the application of the rules. On the other hand, once it clicks it's very straight forward and the tests were easy.
Of course, that was 15 years ago. Lol.
Math is important to learn however because it teaches you to think logically, progressively, and apply rules. Anyone who ever took symbolic logic will see the similarities.
I used to think math is absolute, as if it were fundamentally built into reality. It would be easy to see it this way. After reading about quantum mechanics and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorum, I had to abandon thie notion of their connection.
I'm the same way with quantum physics..I understand it but don't "speak" the math of it..which sucks.
I am like that with history. I like the stories, but would easily fail a test if quizzed on it.
@Gwendolyn2018 - i wished for a teacher like you in high school and college. Out of all the places, I found you here.
I hearya. I have dyscalculia and yet I'm fascinated my higher maths and maths-heavy sciences. I just can't participate. ?