At university, I studied the Philosophy of Mathematics: What is a number? Do numbers exist? What type of truth is a mathematical statement?
Sounds like religion? Sure does! Thoughtful people ask the same questions about “God”. Some people reduce the conversation to a tweet. But our culture’s unprovable assumption that something is only true if provable is wonderfully questioned by the sort of Mathematics and Philosophy that I studied at university. And that is expressed in an easily digestible way in the video above.
Furthermore, beauty and goodness are not provable. And then we have the whole categorisation into analytic and synthetic truths and a priori and a posteriori. Good luck categorising Mathematics into those four possible quadrants!
Enjoy the video.
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My brain went all fuzzy when you mentioned mathmatics!
See, I can’t even spell it correctly!
🙂
Here in the US we just abbreviate to ‘math’ : )
It’s a leap of faith to ‘believe in’ most things, science, for example, I can’t build a Mass Spectrometer nor interpret one for myself.
And I’m sure just as many physicists as priests have wreaked havoc by becoming zealous or unleashing ideas with unintended consequences which lead to cruelty or destruction as much as they herald progress or beauty or kindness.