Maths and Science
Mark Chu-Carroll, Good Math Bad Math, has a nice post on why science needs maths entitled A Stunning Demonstration of Why Good Science Needs Good Math. [Link]
I do have to admit to being somewhat abashed at his praise for the physicists who did the work he cites. Usually physicists are more interested in “beating the maths into submission” than being rigorous enough to even moderately satisfy a mathematician. Of course, as he describes, physicists have a test not generally available to mathematicians. If the physics theory is reasonably accurate, and the maths comprising the model of that theory are reasonable, then the numbers produced can be compared to experiment or observation.
I suspect that’s why physicists usually are so little concerned with proofs.
But we also have to recognize that traditionally Physics is the most mathematical of the sciences. That’s why Rutherford made his comment “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”
There is in physics more than just maths. The creativity is different for a physicist than for a mathematician:
“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars- mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million- year-old light. A vast pattern, of which I am a part…. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not hurt the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.” Richard Feynman
Enough blather. More later.
