What do numbers do? - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

A264172 · #16 08-12-2005, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

... For instance, all displacement boats hulls have a hull speed of 1.34 x square root of the waterline length. So, it seems that 1.34 has a causal role in the speed of the boat...

...Do numbers get us closer to what is real than words do? Numbers seem to play an ordering role in the universe unlike the other words we use?

Would that be confined to the The 'Waters' made of H2O on the planet earth..?
Words often do have multiple meanings where numbers are single use.
In language if a person speaks 300 words they are considered to have only the most basic fluency. If a person uses 5000 words they are considered very well educated. If a person has 5000 numbers that's just the very tip.
Also words are subjective and and encapsulate possibly very large mathimatical formula like a bird or constipation.
Numbers are more universal. I would think you would have to travel very far before physics would cease to apply. But they cannot necessarily be relied upon to represent objectivity since we must still place them within our computer and, in that, give them relivence through application.
So I don't see either as being more real (having verifiable existence) but numbers are the best way to measure of our surroundings.

2c

A264172 · #17 08-12-2005, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GermanStar

Numbers don't cause things, they measure things that already exist.

I agree. Things have aspects that can be represented by numbers.
But are the numbers inherent in the thing?
To a large degree, yes. A bird's egg becomes a bird. But it is unlike any other bird in some way.
Numbers may direct the bird and they may represent the bird but fundamentally they are an expression of the bird.

GermanStar · #18 08-12-2005, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dculkin

The number was manipulated when someone chose water as the medium through which the boat travels and chose to use feet and knots as the measures of length and speed. Use a medium with a different viscosity and density and you will get a different number. Likewise, measure your speed in meters per second and your length in meters and you will get a different number.

I still like the question I asked the other day. Was calculus invented? Or was it discovered? I was taught that Newton invented calculus so that he would have a way to explain his laws of physics. Some of you commented that the credit should go to Leibnitz, not Newton. The more interesting question, though, is whether it was invented at all. I think it might be a law of nature that was discovered, rather than invented.

Was mathematics discovered or invented? I'll say that the base 10 version that we're comfortable with was invented, just as any language is invented. And have no doubt -- that is precisely what mathematics is -- a language. Within the context of that language, calculus was discovered as a means to describe and generate three-dimensional graphs.

kerry · #19 08-12-2005, 12:12 PM

I think the invented/discovered issue is relevant. In some ways, it seems invented insofar as the squiggles we use to designate number or the base we chose are arbitrary but when it comes to how those squiggles represent repeated patterns in the external world, they seem discovered or we at least what to think they are discovered since we want the patterns to apply universally.
Calculus seems to be more than just a means to describe three dimensional graphs. It's a way of 'talking' or 'representing' what is actually happening in the world independent of us.

Lebenz · #20 08-12-2005, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

But I'm not so much interested in the theology of the question as in the role of numbers in reality.
Do numbers get us closer to what is real than words do? Numbers seem to play an ordering role in the universe unlike the other words we use?

Numbers are mostly used to quantify, where words are used to illustrate and/or qualify. Neither is closer to reality as they are both schemas and used to present concepts as reductions of reality.

A hydrogen atom has 1 electron
Earth is 1 planet
Our Sun is 1 star
The milky way is 1 galaxy

They all have a quanitity of 1

GermanStar · #21 08-12-2005, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

I think the invented/discovered issue is relevant. In some ways, it seems invented insofar as the squiggles we use to designate number or the base we chose are arbitrary but when it comes to how those squiggles represent repeated patterns in the external world, they seem discovered or we at least what to think they are discovered since we want the patterns to apply universally.
Calculus seems to be more than just a means to describe three dimensional graphs. It's a way of 'talking' or 'representing' what is actually happening in the world independent of us.

Let's try not to confuse the language with the things it represents. Do you consider them one and the same for the sake of this discussion? It's easily done, which is not true of "conventional" language, which tends to describe imprecise things in an even more imprecise way.

GermanStar · #22 08-12-2005, 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

Calculus seems to be more than just a means to describe three dimensional graphs. It's a way of 'talking' or 'representing' what is actually happening in the world independent of us.

Yes, by plotting, dissecting, and intersecting three-dimensional graphs.

djugurba · #23 08-12-2005, 01:30 PM

on a very basic level, absent any clear language, it seems as though most sentient beings have a sensibility regarding the identification of distinct objects in space. A pack of wolves will approach the smallest elk in the herd, and sometimes avoid a herd that is over the threshold of some critical mass of size. So, I think there is something to consider in the hardwiring of the brains of higher-functioning organisms. We all make distinctions.

These distinctions seem to be dependent upon some innate sense of quantity, be it quantity of coloring on the prey we are stalking, or quantity of fish in the school we choose to assail. I'm not sure that gives numbers a reality outside of the many and varied contexts in which we use/understand them though. It's tough to consider the world absent your own contexts...

Realistically, there are no languages without humans to speak them, and numbers would fall in that trap as well. That doesn't mean that the relationships that we describe using numbers are not available for future/other humans/aliens to describe in the same or different ways... But, like gravity, they don't have an existence, per se.

matt7531 · #24 08-12-2005, 01:44 PM

Only two numbers exist, zero and one.

GermanStar · #25 08-12-2005, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt7531

Only two numbers exist, zero and one.

By nary a soul......

kerry · #26 08-12-2005, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djugurba

on a very basic level, absent any clear language, it seems as though most sentient beings have a sensibility regarding the identification of distinct objects in space. A pack of wolves will approach the smallest elk in the herd, and sometimes avoid a herd that is over the threshold of some critical mass of size. So, I think there is something to consider in the hardwiring of the brains of higher-functioning organisms. We all make distinctions.

These distinctions seem to be dependent upon some innate sense of quantity, be it quantity of coloring on the prey we are stalking, or quantity of fish in the school we choose to assail. I'm not sure that gives numbers a reality outside of the many and varied contexts in which we use/understand them though. It's tough to consider the world absent your own contexts...

Realistically, there are no languages without humans to speak them, and numbers would fall in that trap as well. That doesn't mean that the relationships that we describe using numbers are not available for future/other humans/aliens to describe in the same or different ways... But, like gravity, they don't have an existence, per se.

Following out the logic of that argument, doesn't it imply that nothing has existence per se? I'm happy to agree that all of linguistic creations, including number, are our creations, but I do want to say that something exists even if all our descriptions of what exists are less than absolute.

GermanStar · #27 08-12-2005, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djugurba

But, like gravity, they don't have an existence, per se.

Gravity doesn't exist? Is this one of those 'if a tree falls in the woods' things? Gravity exists whether we're here to experience it or not. Remember that gravity is a force, forces apply energy, and E=MC². Allow me to present the graviton!

A264172 · #28 08-12-2005, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry edwards

... nothing has existence per se? ...

I would say that was true to the extent that all things must die.

So we exist in the same way that dinosaurs exist...or do not.

djugurba · #29 08-12-2005, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GermanStar

Gravity doesn't exist? Is this one of those 'if a tree falls in the woods' things? Gravity exists whether we're here to experience it or not. Remember that gravity is a force, forces apply energy, and E=MC². Allow me to present the graviton!

No, we look for a noun where we should be describing verbs. Things that go up come down, when considering things thrown up on revolving planets in orbit around other masses in space. There is no THING that exists that causes this to happen, it's more or less a characteristic of the totality of the circumstances.

Lebenz · #30 08-12-2005, 02:34 PM

Does anything exist onto itself or is all existence contingent on someone to perceive it?

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