Mathematics (was: God and Persons)

[Guest guest]

Dear Antoine and friends,

according to a commonly-held belief, mathematicians and

logicians supposedly "autodefine" their own playground along

with the toys and methods used therein, wantonly assigning

meanings to ideas of their own invention.

But this is a misunderstanding.

Mathematics is not about inventing.

It's about discovering.

Doing mathematics feels like finding out about God's blueprints,

about laws and structures already pre-existing somewhere in spirit.

Most mathematicians are utterly and continually amazed

about the fact that these mathematical laws, though

"perceived only with the eyes of spirit" (Plato said that) -

that these laws also apply so well to the world we live in.

Division by zero is a case in point. Mathematicians did not just try

to "give" meaning to it. They humbly and patiently researched the

relevant structures and found out exactly where division by zero

is meaningful and where it is not.

For example, the above surface (which you would have to imagine

to extend into infinity) is but one of the countless geometric

"personifications" of division by zero. Here, division by zero

cannot have a result. This is not due to any whimsical mathematician's

prescriptions but due to the fact that division by zero here would

correspond to coordinates of a point where none can exist because

the surface has a hole there (the "hole" in the "smokestack")!

OTH, the limit processes inherent in division by zero will sometimes

lead to finite results that can be mapped to points of the

corresponding geometric shapes; then, division by zero may be

defined to make sense. These phenomena are quite well researched

not only for the two- and three-dimensional but for the

higher-dimensional cases as well.

I hope this will help to make a little more clear what was stated

above - that mathematics and logic are not about inventing, but

about discovering. Math is not like writing fiction about some far-off

country, peopling a novel with creatures invented as one feels inspired.

It's like going to that far-off country on an expedition, bringing back

artifacts and maps and photographs of the natives.

Kindest regards,

Michael

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----Von: Antoine Carré

[carrea (AT) videotron (DOT) ca]Gesendet: Wednesday, March 27, 2002

06:23An: Betreff: Re:

God and Persons/hello - attempt 2

This did not pas yesterday, so I am trying again,

<< Hello Antoine,yes, it's a paradox class that is well known to

logicians. It is one of thereasons for the use of self-referential

all-quantifiers being inadmissiblein current axiomatic systems of

predicate logic.Sorry if this sounds too much like jargon, but it's

true. :-) >>You don't have to be sorry Michael,It must be why the

Babylon tower comes with the myth tied to it that itwill collapse at

one point or the other.When mathematicians will have found a

substance to give meaning to ( 1divided by 0 ) they will have found

their glue to stop the Babylonian towerfrom wanting to collapse in

its striving for the unreachable infinite theyauto defined in the

seed of the development of math's

itself.Antoine/join

All paths go

somewhere. No path goes nowhere. Paths, places, sights, perceptions,

and indeed all experiences arise from and exist in and subside back

into the Space of Awareness. Like waves rising are not different than

the ocean, all things arising from Awareness are of the nature of

Awareness. Awareness does not come and go but is always Present. It

is Home. Home is where the Heart Is. Jnanis know the Heart to be the

Finality of Eternal Being. A true devotee relishes in the Truth of

Self-Knowledge, spontaneously arising from within into It Self.

Welcome all to a.Your use of is subject

to the

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[Guest guest]

Hello Michael,

Thank you for taking the time to answer me,

<< Division by zero is a case in point. Mathematicians did not just

try to "give" meaning to it. They humbly and patiently researched the

relevant structures and found out exactly where division by zero is

meaningful and where it is not. >>

Its like the Big Bang theory for cosmologist,

" Where did everything come from? Don't say, "the Big Bang." To say

that everything came from the Big Bang is like saying babies come

from maternity wards—true in a narrow sense, but it hardly goes back

far enough. Where did the stuff that went "bang" come from? What was

it? Why did it bang? "

>From http://discover.com/current_issue/index.html

In that article of Discover magazine the physicist Alan Guth says that

this stuff that went "bang" came from nothing, and for him it makes

sense because we are also nothing. Using his jargon, the negative

gravitational field of the universe balance out the positive field of

matter.

One can seek this nothing in an exponential narrowing tunnel (big

bang, 1/0, etc..) or in the equilibrium in the horizon of the sky.

The nothing at the end of the tunnel or sitting at the beach looking

at the sun set is the same nothing, the paths are different. Nothing

less, nothing more...

<< I hope this will help to make a little more clear what was stated

above - that mathematics and logic are not about inventing, but about

discovering. >>

It is clear to me. Yet it is my experience that believing at one point

or another that the nothing is only at the end of the tunnel may stop

one from seeing that it is also behind ones own eyes or under each

rock or behind each object one may come to believe exist. In fact

this process may be the very process of creation of things that

believe that they are not nothing.

Thank you for you picture, I like the colors the software used to generate it.

Actual size of the Universe we know at

1.000000000000000000000000000000001x10 (exponent -34) second after it

came out of nothing.

Antoine

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