Math and Numbers, what makes them click?

[NikolaeVarius]

I was reading up on the history of math, and the origin of concepts like 0 and Eucledian math when I thought of a question.

Why is it that, numbers, a "man made" idea is able to function within our Universe so well? How did something that was created to count how many fish a person was given, evolve into what we have today?

I'm always amazed at what math can do. How we can figure out the orbits of planets and figure out the exact length of a day. Why is it that ideas such as "addition" and "subtraction" "logarithms" and other things that we created can be used to describe the motion of heavenly bodies, especially when many of these ideas were created before people even had the concept of planets.

It might be a stupid question, but I want to know if there is an "explanation' behind this.

 

[Born2bwire]

Science, it works bitches.

 

[theMan]

math is a tool. just like the stones used by the neanderthals, it has advanced and developed in order to solve more and more complex problems.

 

[Cogman]

It fits our universe because we made it fit it. It started really fitting it when we used it to measure exact things (Like number of atoms, speed of light) once you get an exact measurement of something that is fairly constant in the universe, it doesn't matter what number system you use, it can be formed to match the universe.

Math is man-made, but its one of the most perfect man-made things in existence.

 

[CycloWizard]

Math isn't created so much as it is discovered. Math in and of itself is pure logic, so it exists whether or not we discover it.

 

[presidentender]

Math fits well with reality because it is a system to rigorously describe reality. I can make math describe un-reality in a rigorous fashion, too, but it's not so handy.

 

[KIAman]

Math is simply a abstract language to describe the world. Just like language, it is the "human" tool to communicate our abstract ideas about reality. Just like our language makes sense, even if the sequence has not been made, math can properly simulate something like the orbit of the planets without ever directly observing the exact path.

Example1: The sequence of words "I like to eat oranges only in the mornings and pears only in the evenings." make sense even if you never heard someone say it before, so does...

Example2: The sequence of math "20 (elephants) + 20 (elephants) = 40 (elephants) even if you've never seen an elephant before or if you have, never experienced 2 groups of 20 elephants to directly count them yourself.

 

[PowerEngineer]

A relevant Einstein quote:

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

but he also said this:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

 

[firewolfsm]

Math doesn't really answer anything about reality. It gives us an answer that we relate to reality, just as what we put into the equation was just something we use to symbolize aspects of reality.

 

[DrPizza]

Physics describes the universe. Mathematics is the language of physics.

Not wanting to get into a philosophical argument, but if the universe was created by a God, he's a mathematical genius.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Physics describes the universe. Mathematics is the language of physics.

Not wanting to get into a philosophical argument, but if the universe was created by a God, he's a mathematical genius.

Some of the greatest mathematical breakthroughs were made by assuming that things behave in an optimal manner, because God certainly would have made them that way. Perhaps the most prevalent is the principle of least action.

 

[Calculator83]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Math isn't created so much as it is discovered. Math in and of itself is pure logic, so it exists whether or not we discover it.

So is everything else, if you account for the fact that all we know are perceptions of.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Calculator83
So is everything else, if you account for the fact that all we know are perceptions of.

*facepalm*

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
I was reading up on the history of math, and the origin of concepts like 0 and Eucledian math when I thought of a question.

Why is it that, numbers, a "man made" idea is able to function within our Universe so well? How did something that was created to count how many fish a person was given, evolve into what we have today?

I'm always amazed at what math can do. How we can figure out the orbits of planets and figure out the exact length of a day. Why is it that ideas such as "addition" and "subtraction" "logarithms" and other things that we created can be used to describe the motion of heavenly bodies, especially when many of these ideas were created before people even had the concept of planets.

It might be a stupid question, but I want to know if there is an "explanation' behind this.

Get a piece of paper, put a black dot on it, and ask yourself, how do you know the dot is not equal to the white paper... that is where math comes from, our ability to distinguish inequalities.

Distinctions give birth to our concept of one or number, our numbers are merely instances or reflections of geometric shapes and patterns in the world (in their varied forms). Math is "built in", Mayan's used shapes for numerals, I think think numbers are in fact shapes, we have just lost this knowledge because we've compressed the objects and hidden them behind arabic numerals.

 

[JTsyo]

What funny is that we created math for sake of real world applications but then it got a life of it's own. For example, trying to find prime numbers or all the different sequences people make up. It's gets even better since later someone notices, hey wait a sec, this natural phenomenon is following such and such sequence.