On 08/21/2017 08:54 AM, Tim Golden BandTech.com wrote:
> On Monday, August 14, 2017 at 6:43:23 AM UTC-4, J.B. Wood wrote:
>> On 08/13/2017 12:23 PM,
alal...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> I came across a book that asked this question. My answer is "no", for there is no God. I believe Pythagoras believed that the ultimate nature of reality is number. What I believe is that math exists independent of man. If we were to one day meet aliens, what we'll have in common is maths. Shared concepts like prime numbers.
>>>
>>> Abhinav Lal
>>> Writer & Investor
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, unless I'm mistaken an examination of recorded history will show
>> that the most noteworthy of individuals that contributed to the pool of
>> scientific knowledge did/do believe in God. Some of those folks may
>> have been agnostics but not atheists (a philosophy that also requires an
>> act of faith - you believe in the non-existence of God). Great
>> scientific minds know that that there is something greater than
>> themselves that is responsible for all we perceive. Whether you want to
>> call that God, Jesus, Allah, mother nature or something else is up to
>> you. Yes, depending on your religious persuasion and its texts held
>> sacred, God's "plan" for the human species varies. Sincerely,
>>
>> --
>> J. B. Wood e-mail:
arl_1...@hotmail.com
>
> If it is true about the contributors then perhaps we should doubt the journals for their religious bias. Now that would be some investigation. I wouldn't doubt if it is true. It's pretty clear that western math ignores eastern math historically speaking and I guess to this day.
<snip>
Hello, and you have provided some thought-provoking points. Except for
perhaps symbolic representation there is no "Western" and "Eastern" math
just as there's no "German" vs "Jewish" physics. 1+1 is always 2 no
matter who describes it. No doubt some ancient Greek, Arab, and Chinese
concepts were rediscovered during the Renaissance in Europe. But the
birth of modern mathematics (starting with the calculus) probably owes
more to Newton and Leibniz than anyone else. Often it's the person(s)
who unites a bunch of, at first glance, disparate concepts into a
unified theory that gets the credit (James C. Maxwell comes to mind).
As for the divine, my take on finding out how the universe and all in it
behaves is the human attempt to look under the hood for detail of God's
engineering. But I don't "mix" religion and science. I don't take the
Bible to a grad school class on quantum physics nor do I show up at
Sunday school with a textbook on nuclear reactors. I admit having such
a view places restriction on literal interpretation of all things
Biblical - but that doesn't mean the biblical message is somehow
obscured by such a view. No doubt, as you point out, current human
brain capacity places a limit on understanding God's handiwork (sans
intervention by the Master). I think we're a ways away from that limit,
though we may well destroy ourselves before we get there. Sincerely,