A Conversation for Mathematics

However, the deeper one looks into the subject, the more one realises that mathematics is relevant to everything, simply because you can describe every single thing in the Universe with numbers.

Post 1

DrRodge

"However, the deeper one looks into the subject, the more one realises that mathematics is relevant to everything, simply because you can describe every single thing in the Universe with numbers."

This is a dangerous statement because it isn't true. Mathematics can also describe things that don't occur in the universe and is probably why there is a problem in formulating the grand unification theory.

Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" describes the three factors that account for the shapes of all the shells that can be found on the planet, and a formula or computational algorithm can be written to produce drawings of any type of shell. However, most of shells predicted by the algorithm are not viable and, therefore, do not occur in nature.

It occurs to me that the majority of predictions made using mathematics may only exist in the mathematical world, because when applied to the real world, they are invalid.

So I'm afraid that the failure to produce a grand unifying theory may be due to the fact that either there isn't one, or somewhere along the line, a mistake or a false assumption has been made.

Since the speed of light is involved in these types of calculations, perhaps the assumption that it cannot be exceeded is false. I can live with the idea that light has a finite maximum velocity because I have my own theory as to why this should be and it makes sense, but has anyone ever explained why this should stop anything else travelling faster? If you applied a constant force to a body forever it will continue to accelerate in a straight line forever won't it? (For argument's sake, there is no friction and no other force being applied).


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However, the deeper one looks into the subject, the more one realises that mathematics is relevant to everything, simply because you can describe every single thing in the Universe with numbers.

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