🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5niove$gb4$1...@sue.cc.uregina.ca>,
ba...@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John  Bayko) wrote:

>   Same with pinecones...
>    If mathematics is made up by humans, did the number of Earths
>vary between 0 and infinity until the first neanderthal learned to
>count to one? It seems to me that the existance of mathematics is
>pretty much independent of the perception of aggregate brain cells,
>otherwise the very fabric of rality would have been homogeneous chaos
>which couldn't have formed the very brain cells required to bring
>order to it.

I think mathematics is simply a tool, invented by humans, which codifies
certain relationships in the real world in such a way that humans can
handle them.

I agree that saying that it's human invention doesn't belittle it; the
relationships still exist and Maths is one of the ways (probably the only
effective way) we can explain them and manipulate our knowledge of them.

I'm just a bit wary of ascribing too much significance to certain
relationships; the nautilus shell and the Fibonacci series comes up a lot.
How about the shape of suspension bridges (or hanging creepers) and
catenaries? It's an almost trivial coincidence because they are *designed*
to be the same, but in fact there's no fundamental difference. It's a case
of function described by Maths. Of course Maths will contain close
analogues to real life forms; that's its job.

-- 
Peter