Are numbers created or discovered?
- Thread starter Cypress
- Start date
BidenPresident
Verified User
Whether platonic or constructivist, how would we know the difference?
I do not think there is any right answer. It is an open question, and your opinion is as good as mine.
I think fractals in nature are possibly an expression of an underlying mathematical reality which exists independently of human consciousness. I also think you are right that there is that element of human invention to mathematics to create a language we can use to describe observable reality.
I don't know what constructivist means.
I just used Platonic lexicon in the context of an abstract reality we can only sense with our mind's eye.
But even if they were a human creation could they not still fill the understanding of an abstract Platonic reality regardless of if they exist somewhere out there?
You make a perfectly fair point.
evince
Truthmatters
The structure exists without humans
It’s a language we use to understand that structure
BidenPresident
Verified User
Platonism and constructivism are two ideas about the reality and numbers. Constructivism says math is real only such that it can be constructed and used.
Your right in that sense. Pi does not have to be represented as 3.141, that is just our convention for talking about it using Hindu-Arabic numerals. But the underlying reality of it exists regardless of human convention.
BidenPresident
Verified User
Just because you're uneducated does not mean everyone else is equally ignorant.
I didn't know about that word, thanks
In the video, Roger Penrose, one of the greatest mathematicians of the last 100 years, considers this an interesting question warranting reflection.
I figured that makes the question good enough for me.
AProudLefty
Black Kitty Ain't Happy
It is both.
Numbers are invented to describe the reality. How did the geniuses predict something that happened?
That is well said, and there is a lot of truth to your assertion.
But nobody invented the square root of two. The Pythagoreans stumbled across it and were disturbed and shocked by it's mathematical implications.
But how did you know you had three goats? Without numbers, you wouldn't know what you had, numbers allowed you to come up with the arbitrary understand of what three means and allows you to know. Question becomes were numbers invented by humans or do they exist outside of human comprehension
Granted a little off what is normally seen on this forum, but interesting, "cypress" gets kudos for getting it beyond three posts without the evolving into the uusal personal insults