The Beginning and End of Pure Mathematics

[Mole]

Mathematics is only useful when it is put into practice as a tool to construct things, when there is just theory it is unlimited and useless.

Mathematicians do mathematics for it own sake.

Those who regard mathematics as a tool are as vulgar as those who regard music as a tool.

But don't tell me, I can hear it coming, you regard MBTI is simply a tool.

If you regard mathematics or music or MBTI as a tool, you become a tool yourself.

 

[jixmixfix]

I understand you are as reluctant to let go of God as letting go of mathematics.

You are certainly not alone.

Where the argument really lies is, what evidence is there really for proving God's non existence? What has been found today that hasn't been found in this past?

 

[jixmixfix]

Mathematicians do mathematics for it own sake.

Those who regard mathematics as a tool are as vulgar as those who regard music as a tool.

But don't tell me, I can hear it coming, you regard MBTI is simply a tool.

If you regard mathematics or music or MBTI as a tool, you become a tool yourself.

Actually I do regard all those things as a tool, why is it negative to become a tool? Music is a tool, music is a tool for many reasons, music is a tool for happiness and pleasure. Music is a tool for the sensations it puts forward to our ears, a tool to help us grow.

 

[jixmixfix]

Mathematicians do mathematics for it own sake.

Those who regard mathematics as a tool are as vulgar as those who regard music as a tool.

But don't tell me, I can hear it coming, you regard MBTI is simply a tool.

If you regard mathematics or music or MBTI as a tool, you become a tool yourself.

Math is no more than a complex of numbers, a problem, if there is no discovery process and it can't be used it's useless to our world and left in thin air.

 

[Mole]

Where the argument really lies is, what evidence is there really for proving God's non existence? What has been found today that hasn't been found in this past?

The latest evidence is found in, "The Double Helix", by Watson and Crick.

Surely you have heard of the sequencing of the genome and how it shows forever, "The Origin of Species", is correct.

God is no longer necessary except on the USA dollar which says, "In God We Trust", and of course to justify Islamic Jihad.

God has been relegated to the dollar and jihad.

 

[Mole]

Math is no more than a complex of numbers, a problem, if there is no discovery process and it can't be used it's useless to our world and left in thin air.

What can I say? You seem to have no experience of Pure Mathematics and confuse it with Applied Mathematics.

 

[Mole]

Actually I do regard all those things as a tool, why is it negative to become a tool? Music is a tool, music is a tool for many reasons, music is a tool for happiness and pleasure. Music is a tool for the sensations it puts forward to our ears, a tool to help us grow.

A tool is for instrumental purposes while Pure Mathematics is for intrinsic purposes.

Perhaps you regard yourself as an instrument of God, but I see you as an end in yourself, not a means to an end, even of God.

 

[jixmixfix]

What can I say? You seem to have no experience of Pure Mathematics and confuse it with Applied Mathematics.

I like how you just rant out a personal attack instead giving a reasonable argument.

 

[jixmixfix]

A tool is for instrumental purposes while Pure Mathematics is for intrinsic purposes.

Perhaps you regard yourself as an instrument of God, but I see you as an end in yourself, not a means to an end, even of God.

your a wacko to think math will solve anything if not used for something practical, even for intrinsic purposes the mathematician is exercising his brain, to develop his complex thinking skills, thus also a tool. The argument of math being used for intrinsic purposes is a fallacy in and of itself.

 

[jixmixfix]

A tool is for instrumental purposes while Pure Mathematics is for intrinsic purposes.

Perhaps you regard yourself as an instrument of God, but I see you as an end in yourself, not a means to an end, even of God.

I'm glad you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

[jixmixfix]

The latest evidence is found in, "The Double Helix", by Watson and Crick.

Surely you have heard of the sequencing of the genome and how it shows forever, "The Origin of Species", is correct.

God is no longer necessary except on the USA dollar which says, "In God We Trust", and of course to justify Islamic Jihad.

God has been relegated to the dollar and jihad.

I agree his theory is correct but it still does not prove the non-existence of god. It disproves the fundamentalists theory who believe God created humans first Adam and Eve.

 

[Mole]

I agree his theory is correct but it still does not prove the non-existence of god.

You're right, it doesn't prove the non-existence of God. It just makes God unnecessary.

Look, I am writing to you from the Hancock Library, the mathematics and physics library of the Australian National University. And this library contains millions of equations. But in not one of all these millions of equations is God mentioned even once.

God is entirely unnecessary. God is now an optional extra. God is little more than a fashion accessory for the dollar and Islamic Jihad.

Occam's Razor cuts God out of the picture.

 

[jixmixfix]

You're right, it doesn't prove the non-existence of God. It just makes God unnecessary.

Look, I am writing to you from the Hancock Library, the mathematics and physics library of the Australian National University. And this library contains millions of equations. But in not one of all these millions of equations is God mentioned even once.

God is entirely unnecessary. God is now an optional extra. God is little more than a fashion accessory for the dollar and Islamic Jihad.

Occam's Razor cuts God out of the picture.

Wait so your point is math was suppose to be used to find the existence of god?, how do math and god correlate? I never saw the two together. How can you prove the existence of God through calculations of numbers, to think so is a dead end.

 

[Mole]

Wait so your point is math was suppose to be used to find the existence of god?, how do math and god correlate? I never saw the two together. How can you prove the existence of God through calculations of numbers, to think so is a dead end.

Well, so many mathematicians have sought to find God through mathematics. Hilbert is a good example. And they have been very reluctant, even today, to give up the search. Instead they have tried to destroy their mathematical colleagues, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, with ad hominem attacks, academic marginalization, and refusal to publish.

But Kurt Gödel's two incompleteness theorems are crystal clear and undeniable. And undeniably unsettling. Just as the death of God is unsettling, almost as unsettling as the death of mathematics.

This discovery is so unsettling the great mathematicians who made it went mad or were driven mad by their colleagues and committed suicide.

So ask yourself - why do you know more about Lindsay Lohan than Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel or Alan Turing?

 

[stringstheory]

Victor, would you elaborate more on Gödel's incompleteness theorems a little more? you seem very well versed on the subject. I think while i might understand the gist of what his work concludes, I don't feel that I fully comprehend what it means..but I'm very interested.

 

[onemoretime]

Victor, would you elaborate more on Gödel's incompleteness theorems a little more? you seem very well versed on the subject. I think while i might understand the gist of what his work concludes, I don't feel that I fully comprehend what it means..but I'm very interested.

I just fried my brain on the command: "prove that a quantum exists."

 

[Mondo]

Yes.

Preposterous, you say. Well, even Kurt Gödel thought is was preposterous, and tried to prove it wrong but he failed and starved himself to death.

I hope, though, I haven't spoiled your appetite.

No, I see where you're getting at. Carry on!

 

[onemoretime]

Yes.

Preposterous, you say. Well, even Kurt Gödel thought is was preposterous, and tried to prove it wrong but he failed and starved himself to death.

I hope, though, I haven't spoiled your appetite.

As M. Arouet said, il fait cultiver notre jardin.

 

[stringstheory]

summary from wikipedia:

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (essentially, a computer program) is capable of proving all facts about the natural numbers. For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem shows that if such a system is also capable of proving certain basic facts about the natural numbers, then one particular arithmetic truth the system cannot prove is the consistency of the system itself.

i think i can see the big picture, which (from what i can gather) is that a paradox exists here simply because mathematics is a concept created by man, and thus flawed like every other idea we come up with which, i think, totally makes sense. what i find myself uncertain of is the details of the italicized bits...

 

[wildcat]

Mathematics begins with an injunction - make a distinction.

And ends with being unable to decide whether a problem is solvable or not.

It's hard to believe I know, but mathematics has a beginning and an end.

I have been touting mathematics as the language of God, but I was wrong.

God, as we all know, is dead but some of us hoped we could hear his last whispers in mathematics. But no, mathematics itself teaches us that mathematics cannot describe the world.

So we are left in the Universe, bereft children without God or logic. All we have left is ourselves.

But alas the lust for Certainty remains in fundamentalism. Although we now know with mathematical certainty that the foundations are air.

And as you note, this is a paradox that has driven four of our greatest mathematicians to madness and suicide, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing.

Turing was harassed by the police. He did not kill himself because of mathematics.
A blind alley is not en end.