When Pythagoras discovered his theorem there were, of course, inferences from physical reality, and a lot of mathematics is drawn from our experience in the physical world, but our imagination is limited and a lot of mathematics is actually discovered within the narrative of a hidden mathematical world. Pythagoras’ theorem is about geometric shapes in an idealised space, a flat Euclidian plane which, in fact, is not found in the real world. It was only after Einstein that we realised we lived in a curved space and that light doesn’t travel in a straight line but bends around a star. For millennia people thought we inhabited a flat, three-dimensional world. Euclidian geometry deals with flat spaces, such as the three-dimensional flat space. The only reason the theory means the same is that it describes the reality of the physical world, so mathematics must need the physical world. We can disagree on many different things, but mathematics is something we all agree on. Our perception of the physical world can be distorted. It means the same today as it will a thousand years from now. This is the special quality of mathematics. Moreover, that theorem means the same to us today as it meant to Pythagoras 2,500 years ago. However, if Pythagoras had not lived, someone else would have discovered exactly the same Pythagoras theorem. There is no reason to believe that another author would have written that same novel. If Leo Tolstoy had not lived we would never have known Anna Karenina.

$edward frenkel math$

We mathematicians discover them and are able to connect to this hidden reality through our consciousness.

I argue, as others have done before me, that mathematical concepts and ideas exist objectively, outside of the physical world and outside of the world of consciousness. He says it briefly and eloquently in an interview in The Economist.ĭoes maths exist without human beings to observe it, like gravity? Or have we made it up in order to understand the physical world? It also gives access to another, ultimate reality that transcends our own. Math, he argues, is not only beautiful and worthy of our love. Frenkel in his book are not only fascinating but very relevant to subjects we touch on often here. Congratulations to UC Berkeley mathematician Edward Frenkel whose book Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality is in the top five science books for the year at Amazon! I wrote about Frenkel in a different context recently when he participated in the expression of some dangerous reservations about Darwinian theory in, of all places, the New York Times Book Review (' Someone at the New York Times Wasn’t Being Sufficiently Vigilant About Stealth ‘Creationism’ When This One Got Through').

Edward frenkel math