Does Nature use the decimal system - if not what does it use ?

Question

I understand that nature uses various systems such as the Fibonacci Series etc etc. But is there one mathematical system that nature prefers above all others at a fundamental level ?

Answer 1

The number Phi (1.618............) seems to come up a lot when you look at things like the ratio of the length of our hands compared to our arms or the ratio of our feet compared to our legs.

It turns up in a lot of science, and they consider this a very special number.

Answer 2

In my experience it has mainly been, fibonacci/ phi/ golden section/ golden string

here is a couple of links from the university of surrey:
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat2.html

Fibonacci Fact

Fibonacci was capable of quite remarkable calculating feats. He was able to find the positive solution of the following cubic equation:

x^3+2x^2+10x=20

What is even more remarkable is that he carried out all his working using the Babylonian system of mathematics which uses base 60. He gave the result as 1;22,7,42,33,4,40 which is equivalent to:

1+ 22/60 + 7/60^2 + 42/60^3 + 33/60^4 + 4/60^5 + 40/60^6

It is not known how he obtained this, but it was 300 years before anybody else could find such accurate results. It is quite interesting that Fibonacci gave the result in this way at the same time as telling everybody else to use the decimal number system!

Answer 3

Nature does not use mathematics or physics. Nature simply is. Mathematics and even more so physics were invented to describe it, but that doesn't mean that nature uses them.

This is similar to a photo of a person. The photo describes what the person looks like but it is not the person and the person on the photo doesn't need to know anything about photography or the technology used in a photo camera.

Of course we notice various mathematical systems within nature, but that is because mathematics was based on human observations of nature.

Answer 4

Number bases are just arbitrary... the base chosen affects the rules of arithmetic (5+6 = 11 base 10, 5+6 = B base 16, 5 + 6 = 14 base 7) but not the underlying concept (one more than the number of your fingers).

I think a more interesting question is, is all of nature fundamentally discrete (e.g. quantum physics) or are some things in nature genuinely continuous (space-time?)

Answer 5

No it doesnt use the decimal system or any other system. The universe (Thus nature) doesnt do math. It operates according to a set of certain principles, some of which we know, and many we dont. Humans use a logical descriptive language we call mathematics in order to try and understand (and sometimes predict) the principles the universe operates under.

Answer 6

DNA uses base 4 to encode for amino acids, using the four possible base-pairs. Each amino acide is encoded as three of these base-4 digits, allowing up to 64 amino acids to be encoded. In fact, 61 are encoded and the other three symbols are used for other pruposes.

Answer 7

It doesn't matter - base 10 or 2 or 16(hexadecimal) as long as we can count. Base ten just works well.

Answer 8

Pi