[X] My Assistant

[hendric]

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#porco

Where do I sign up?

[dvandorn]

Ah, but mathematics do *not* exist independently of human thought. That's the first thing you have to realize. Mathematics is simply an organizational system used by human minds to describe and predict the real world. The fact that mathematics can be used to describe the Cosmos merely means that the Cosmos follows certain physical rules -- rules which can be described, modeled and predicted by the words and implicit logic of mathematics. These mathematical terms and formulae are simply "words" and "sentences" of a precise and rigidly defined language -- a human-derived language designed to describe the world around us.

As such, mathematical statements do not actually "exist" in and of themselves -- they only maintain a reference to the observable Cosmos when they *represent* actual, observable physical phenomena.

Period.

I'm not saying that there should be no investigation into what *appears* to be immaterial. I *am* saying that anything that *remains* immaterial and unable to be observed directly and objectively, after *all* attempts at observing, quantifying and characterizing it scientifically have failed, *must* be considered *unreal* phenomena that exist only in the minds of those who perceive it. That has *no* other real existence.

However, if we insisted, dogmatically, that anything we cannot directly perceive doesn't exist, we would have failed to explore many things that seemed immaterial to us throughout history -- such things as air, and light, which are not necessarily in-your-face sensible. We are not well-served in placing brick walls around such things and stating forevermore that these things are immaterial and thus non-researchable.

I *am* saying that everything that was once thought to be immaterial and since found to be an explainable physical-universe phenomenon was discovered by *assuming* that, if such a thing exists, it *must* have objectively observable characteristics that can be described, modeled and have predictable behaviors. I mean, think about it -- the Romans had Mathematics, without them they could not have built the great architectural works they did. But their world-view defined many *real* things as immaterial and not describable by Mathematics, and so they did not develop technologies that *require* an understanding of some of these *apparently* immaterial things.

And the Roman world-view was limited, not by an incomplete understanding of science or mathematics, but by a *perceived* *(and in many cases provably incorrect) understanding of the immaterial "spiritual" world whcih did not allow for its scientific and mathematical analysis.

So -- I am *not* stating that, for example, humans do not have souls which survive physical death. I *am* saying that, *if* we do, then at some point science will be able to characterize *and predict* the physical construction and behaviors of such souls.

At some point.

Eventually.

But not yet.

-the other Doug