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by robrain
1 day ago
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The mechanic who repairs the cars knows how the engine works. The telco that manages loads and allocates networks knows how voice compression works. The farmers and supermarkets know how the supply chain works. None of your questions show why mathematics should include blobs of incomprehensible gloop, where no mathematician, no logician, no philosopher, no man on the street can make sense of said gloop, or use it in any way to further human knowledge. When it's been decomposed down we can discuss this further, but now it's like saying red is red, just because. |
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But I'll take your expanded statement, to include riding a horse, something even older than the engine. We don't understand fully how a horse works -- biology is still a matter of seeing fragments of the whole -- but people had no problem riding and breeding them before the invention of the car, and before the discovery of genetics.
Meanwhile, understanding the math of a thing -- like stock markets, or nuclear bombs -- does not prevent its use from going badly.
Math is useful and beautiful, and a helpful tool for expanding our understanding of the world, but it is not the whole of understanding, or the sole factor in successful application of science to the world .
Signed, a mathematician.