Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TeMPOraL 2787 days ago
You're wrong.

Science is about building and refining models (theories) in order to make them match observable reality as close as possible, in order to use those models to predict what happens in the future - both by itself, and in consequence of us poking stuff. That's what it means to know "how something works".

Engineering takes these models and adds a "what's the best way to poke things to achieve a desired outcome?" aspect.

Formal proofs are for mathematicians. Mathematics is a purely abstract invention and operates in its own universe, where absolute formal proofs are possible.

1 comments

Mathematics is no different. Our brains are simply computers that verify that the system evaluates based on it's rule system. In fact, you can bootstrap an empirical verification of any mathematical proof holding if sufficient human brain-computes evaluate it, and determine it holds.