Quote:
Originally Posted by tdvance
Some author called it "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics".
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Not just some author. That was
Eugene Wigner, in
"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", written a few years before being awarded the Nobel Pirize in physics.
He wrote:
"The first point is that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it."
and
"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."
Fadingstar wrote:
Quote:
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Yet now it seems that if mathematics says it is - then it must be so. It has become the truth of the thing. And the scientific community seems to be embracing this. Does being the fact it looks good on paper make it so?
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I think Wigner argues very well against this idea in his paper.