I like blueberry Pi.
Are numbers created or discovered?
- Thread starter Cypress
- Start date
I like blueberry Pi.
Melchizedek = Michael
Verified User
Coincidentally I found my thrill on blueberry hill!
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I would say that question presents a false dichotomy. It was both.
I see what you are getting at. The debate seems to be whether these numbers exist independently of human consciousness, or if they are mathmatical derivations of our intellect
In a purely mathmatical sense, we will never actually know e or Pi because they are irrational numbers, and their precise value can never be known no matter how many decimal places we extend it
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Yes but keep in mind that in mathematics pi is an irrational number and an abstract concept but in the real world it’s also an easily observable emperical fact.
That's the interesting thing about Pi. We understand it as a Euclidean geometric construct. But the value of pi will always be a mystery, which we can only seek to approximate.
So I guess what I am saying is that we don't really know what Pi is, we don't know what e is, we don't know what the square root of two really is, beyond mere approximations. But they still exist, whether or not our consciousness has the ability to fully grasp them.
Lightbringer
Loves Me Some Souls
The only real numbers are prime.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Circles exist and the relationship of the circle's circumference to it's diameter exists. How we choose to convey that relationship is man-made.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Yet we still intuitively know it is an inherent property of a circle and put it to a vast number of practical uses.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Like gravity. Gravity exists but it took people like Galileo to put it in human terms.
Yes. We really do not fundamentally grasp the nature of quantum mechanics,, but we can make good use of it in engineering and scientific applications.
I am just interested in the philosophical gap between what we think we know and the ultimate ends of reality.
We only are aware of the infinitesimally tiniest fraction of numbers out there. Theoretically, the overwhelming amount of numbers are transcendental numbers, not real, whole, or rational numbers. But we really only know a few of the transcendental numbers. I think the rest really exist, even if we aren't aware of them, or do not derive them.
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Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Humans riding a bicycle is another great example of that. There is no satisfactory scientific explanation as to how humans are able to ride a bicycle but with some trial and error we lntuitively learn how to do so with little to no understanding of how it works by Newtonian physics or biology.Like gravity. Gravity exists but it took people like Galileo to put it in human terms.
Hitting a baseball is another example though we understand that far better than riding a bicycle. If you look at hitting a baseball from a purely physics point of view it would seem impossible that a human could see the ball, determine to swing or not, then make contact with the ball in approximately 0.3 seconds.
However when you view the physics from a biological perspective that’s not the case. The human brain is phenomenal at picking up on patterns. When a batter prepares to hit a baseball their brain begins picking up on patterns well before the point of release of the baseball. The pitchers stance, wind up and release of the ball provide a large amount of information that the human brain quickly identifies and processes these patterns, along with the trajectory and spin of the ball after the release. That gives the batter well over a second of processing patterns and other information and with that knowledge of the human biology hitting a baseball goes from an impossible proposition from a purely physics standpoint to being difficult but doable when studied from a biological point of view.
Yet the batter is still processing this information intuitively and not cognitively for the most part so there is still a lot about humans being able to hit a baseball we don’t know.
But at least hitting a baseball does have an understood scientific explanation if not a complete one. Humans being able to ride a bicycle as yet had no understood scientific explanation that passes scrutiny.
An amazing thing the human body.