Re: WAS-- Re: Hanson 2006, Mortimer, Baeker response

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:09:56 -0400 Graydon <oak@uniserve.com> writes:
> On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 06:05:34PM +0000, Phil Bigelow scripsit:
> > On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:33:38 -0400 Graydon <oak@uniserve.com> 
> writes:
> > > On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 04:46:32PM +0000, Phil Bigelow 
> scripsit:
> > > > That sounds like the scientific method to me.  Tell me where I 
> am
> > > > wrong.
> > > 
> > > Math is under no obligation to correspond to the tangible 
> universe.
> > > Science is.  That both are required to be independent of any
> > > particular person's understanding doesn't make them the same 
> thing
> > > in the face of that fundamental difference.


> > When I was in college, there was a guy down the hall in my 
> dormatory
> > that said things like that.  He didn't go out on dates.


> As substantive disagreement goes, that lacks something. :)


You never met the guy.  ;-)


> Science is about the pre-existing material world; math, while 
> sometimes
> used to describe the material world, isn't.



So, are you saying that mathematics doesn't need to exist in a physical
universe in order to remain valid?
(I now have an intense desire to retrieve my old lava lamp and bong from
the attic).


> It's [math is] about elegance 
> and
> consistency.


That is also the goal of science.  The currently unresolved Grand Unified
Field Theory is one such current attempt at achieving elegance and
consistency at explaining the physical universe.  And it is science to
boot.  Goals like this aren't achieved all of the time, but that is the
path that all of science takes.

<pb>
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