Science And Math Was: Python's Lisp heritage

[Fernando Pérez]

> Second, math *is* an attempt to describe the physical world - that's what
> makes it useful. Case in point: calculus, which was invented/discovered
> specifically to deal with and describe the motion of physical bodies. Had
> it not been useful in describing such motion, it would have been tossed
> out, or at least not so widely accepted. Math is useful because of its
> relevance to the world around us.

Sorry but no. The fact that certain physical problems may have served as 
inspiration for some mathematical developments can be considered to be purely 
accidental. The foundational structure of mathematics is entirely one of 
logical self consistency, and massive amounts of work was done particularly 
in the 20th century to build that framework. While it is true that up to the 
19th century most (if not all) significant advances in math were prompted by 
challenges from the physical sciences, the work of the formalists in the 20th 
century showed that mathematics could be built entirely on an abstract, 
logical foundation.

That is not to say that it's not _useful_ to have a reference to the physical 
world both for inspiration and for applications, but there's a crucial 
difference between that and saying that 'math *is* an attempt to describe the 
physical world'.

What I do find most fascinating is how many seemingly super-abstract results 
of mathematics turn up (sometimes decades later after they are found) having 
physical implications which noone ever suspected. That 'mysterious 
mathematical structure of the physical world' is one of the most beautiful, 
in my opinion unanswerable questions of the foundation of science.

Cheers,

f.