When I first became interested in studying mathematics an artist friend of mine expressed his disapproval by characterizing mathematicians as people who made bombs. Although I didn’t know very much mathematics at the time, I knew enough to know that he was wrong. But I was reminded today of one of the ways his mistake […]
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I followed a lead today that came at the end of Clifford Pickover’s The Math Book. The last of Pickover’s 250 milestones in mathematics is Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which Tegmark published in 2007 in both scientific and popular articles. The hypothesis is that “our universe is not just described by mathematics – […] I have tried to make the argument, in some of the things I have written, that mathematics experiments with the ways we are able to ‘see.’ But there is a great deal of complexity in what it means ‘to see.’ ‘Seeing’ and ‘reasoning’ are not easily unraveled. An infant’s ‘intuitive physics,’ the subject of recent […] Hearing about visual processes, from neuroscientists and artists alike, consistently brings mathematical thoughts to mind for me – like Samir Zeki’s descriptions of how visual images are constructed, or the Impressionist painters’ attention to the sensations in the eye rather than the subject of the painting, and, of course, Poincaré’s suggestion that visual space has […] I see mathematics as associated with a searching, instinctual will, whose direction is shaped by our biology. I find some of its roots in the way our visual system constructs what we see, or in the way grid cells (neurons lit by location) tell a rat where it is, or the way ants can find […] This blog is motivated in part by my conviction that life itself is far more mysterious than we are yet able to ponder. And it is mathematics that has often redirected my attention back to that mystery as its wealth of conceptual possibilities shows me more of what we don’t understand. David Deutsch very nicely […] Mathematics is usually thought of as a tool that quantifies things in our lives and there is good reason for this. Early in our experience, it is presented to us as a counting and measuring device, not as a way to see something. But this characterization of mathematics is misleading. Quantification alone would not get […] In another blogging heads interview (and in a related blog), John Horgan explores with David Rothenberg the significance of beauty in scientific thinking. Rothenberg’s new book Survival of the Beautiful, is the subject of much of their discussion. While the conversation centers on questions of beauty (how biology does or does not take it into […] I ventured down a series of paths today, no doubt related, but with no quick and easy way to tie them together. So I decided to invite you to look with me and let your mind play. I started with a couple of talks at a recent at a recent Foundational Questions Institute conference on […] |
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