🚀 go-pugleaf

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote
> No, sorry, now I cannot even see where you're coming from on this.

  As I sympathize with his position, I will answer - I doubt if he will have 
the capacity.

  1 is an abstraction devoid from physical reality.  We map the concept of 1 
on to physical realtiy and we base the concept of 1 on our observations of 
what physical reality is.

  We observe that 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples.
  We observe that 1 (generalized object) + 1 (generalized object) = 2 
objects

  We then abstract away the concept of 1, the cocncept of 2 and the concept 
of  addition.

  However, we have only emperical evidence that our abstraction is correct. 
It may be that once in every 10**200 tries 1 apple + 1 apple = 3 apples.  We 
don't know since we haven't done the experiment enough times, and even if we 
did, we would conclude that the experiment was in error.

  So we must recognzie that the abstraction could be wrong.

  Now if the basis of all mathematics might not properly map onto the real 
world, then what does that tell us about the applcability of mathematics to 
predicting the ultra small scale or ultra large scale behaviours of the 
universe?  Perhaps it is that one chance in 10**200 that has generated the 
universe as we know it.  Perhaps 1 vacuum - 1 vacuum = 1 vacuum + 1/10**300 
something else?

  Perhaps when subdividing time intervals 1 + 1 = 1.5 or 3 or 2 or -1 
depending on when the subdivisions are added.

  Does 1 have any meaning in a universe devoid of material existance?  If 
not, then how, and at what point does the applicability of mathematics fail?

  How much time passes when there are no clocks available to measure it?

  What is the size of a particle that is alone in the universe?

  What we do know (within the limitations of human knowledge) is that 
mathematics is a logically consistant mesh of numerical and logical 
relationships.  We have painstakingly construced mathematics so that it is 
so and have chosen a basis which provides us great utility in numerically 
predicting how things work.

  What we do not know - and what we trust on faith - is that the 
abstractions of mathematics correctly map onto the physical universe in all 
situations, at all energies, and in all situations, no matter how extreme.

  It could be and to some extent, has been argued that the complexities of 
quantum mechanics result from the divergence of the physical universe from 
the abstracted laws that we have observed to govern macroscopic objects.

  The clearest recognition of this is in the suggestion that an uncertainty 
term - an indeterminate statement of truth - should be added to boolean 
logic.