🚀 go-pugleaf

On March 28 1995 Dewey Dykstra, Jr. <dykstrad@VARNEY.IDBSU.EDU> asked:

>     Is it that nature 'speaks to us in mathematics' or that we 'hear best
>     things spoken to us in a language' that suits us or that we can
>     understand?

This highly instructive question should be discussed with students. In my
opinion nature does not speak mathematics, it speaks with what is measurable.
But we turn it into words and try to "explain nature". The explanations do not
have to be based on advanced mathematics; simple arithmetics and graphs, as
pointed out by Danold Simanek (about two week ago), are often sufficient.

Here is what M. Faraday wrote on the subject in 1822 (I a letter to Ampere).

"I am unfortunate in [that I lack] mathematical knowledge, and the power
of entering with facility in abstract reasoning...[this] chains me down,
and I can not help now and then comparing myself to a timid navigator who,
though he might boldly and safely steer across the bay or an ocean by the
aid of a compass... is affraight to leave sight of the shore because he
understands not the power of the instrument that is to guide him."

Unable to speak with mathematical equations he invented the concept of
magnetic force lines and use it as his "guiding compass".

                  Ludwik Kowalski    kowalski@apollo.montclair.edu