How can this be that mathematics, a product of human thought & independent of experience?

Question

Is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Please bear with me on this philosophical question. Kindly answer within its context. My great appreciation to all philosophical thinkers. Have a great day!

Answer 1

Your question has many interesting, if not coherent, points.

The use of mathematics to describe the nature of the universe is indeed a human construct. The analogy that can be drawn is similar to speaking a language. In the beginning, one must learn the language. Its usage, its context, and its symbology are all aspects that must be mastered in order to become proficient. In this way, mathematics is the language used to describe how the universe works. Our difficulty is that the language we are using is incomplete, innacurate.

However, to address your question more directly, Mathematics is the exercise of thought imposed upon the universe to help facilitate a deeper understanding.
I am reminded of ananalogy I heard years ago:

"Using particle accelerators to learn about atomic reactions is a bit like shoving a piano down a flight of stairs to learn about music".

In this example lies the heart of what the use of mathematics does for us. As we refine our language of mathematics, we can refine our techniques of how we use it to gain a better perspective of the universe in which we live.

Answer 2

Mr. Wigner, for all his prizes, is an idiot if that's all he can say. Math is not mysterious. It is NOT a product of human thought so much as it is a discovery that it is possible to use counting numbers in complex ways to describe reality. Which came first, the math or the reality? Reality was always there. To discover that math can be descriptive in a way that represents reality is very convenient. However, with reality to guide us to these discoveries, it is very hard to say that math is a product of human thought independent of any experience. I must therefore disagree with your post's headline premise. Specifically the "independent of experience" part. Math was discovered because it is intertwined in our experiences.

Answer 3

It could be objectively argued mathematics is the human mental reaction to extant physical immanent order. It is demonstrated human consciousness is stimulated to actualize essential human abilities, but deprivation, isolation or separation from sense experience fails progress for human conscious realization.

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

'Sensorimotor stage (Infancy). In this period (which has 6 stages), intelligence is demonstrated through motor activity without the use of symbols. Knowledge of the world is limited (but developing) because its based on physical interactions / experiences. Children acquire object permanence at about 7 months of age (memory). Physical development (mobility) allows the child to begin developing new intellectual abilities. Some symbollic (language) abilities are developed at the end of this stage.'

The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative.

Contrarily, it could be subjectively argued that if ideas are innate to human essence, then all human mentality would be identical in notion, concept and idea, and it is not identical for all individuals, i.e. human religions

Answer 4

I believe that Mathematics being abstract, is the apt tool for handling reality because of its purity....... reality is always mixed and never purely black and white...... mathematics helps us separate the mixed up black and white in the reality and facilitates us to understand and analyze it better. Is it not true that we can appreciate a piece of architecture better when we see it from outside from a distance rather than trying to see it from within? Mathematics distances us from the reality and thus gives us a more complete and unbiased view of the same.

Hope I have addressed your question on the right wave-length. Not an easy question to understand and answer!!

Answer 5

It's because the gifted mathematician or philosopher (sometimes they are the same person) has dipped into the river of universal consciousness or knowledge. A symbol might be abstract in and of itself, but it can be used as an instrument to describe physical reality. Nice question. Thank you.

Answer 6

Math is neither purely human nor independent of experience.

Your cat knows when the food bowl is 'almost' empty. The main thrust of evolutionary intelligence revolves around how much energy is available, how far, how fast, how much time is needed.

Natural rhythms like days and seasons and chunks of energy like apples or bananas, make the eventually of counting inevitable. And from counting comes math.

Math applies to reality because it came from reality.

Leibniz may have invented calculus for fun.
Newton did it specifically to understand nature.

Answer 7

They are models upon which experience is actually made proper and ;logical. Do not think that there is nothing apriori, and all knowledge is aposteriori only. Thus the mathematical mmodels and philosophical postulates are normative, designed to create knowledge through the usage of them, without which knowing becomes impossible.

thus mathematical models and Philosophical postulates are independent of experiences and apriori.

Answer 8

Mathmatics IS a product of human product, thank you for reminding me of that. How easily it explains why man is so quick to latch on to only believing Scientific explanations and "proof." Those things are a product of human thought too. Yet, so much of the world we live in is NOT derieved from humans...Why do scientists rely on the human explanations only, and consider to be false those things which cannot fit under the heading "human created?"

Point being: Man didn't make EVERYTHING on this Earth, but we only believe in what man can "prove." That line of thinking, in itsself, is flawed.

Answer 9

our way of understanding the universe evolved in order to give us the ability to understand the universe. among two organisms competing in a real world (an environment) the organism with the greater ability to understand, control, and predict that environment will have marked advantages over the organism which proceeds from false assumptions.

mathematics is a part of our ability to understand and decipher our environment. we are a successful species, so it is natural that our ability to decode our environment is similarly subtle and powerful.

(it is interesting that where there seems no survival value in an aspect of mathematics:- calculating root 2 or predicting the density of the field of rational numbers - mathematics itself is not the impressively elegant cohesion it tends to be in more critical areas).

Answer 10

it is an abstract science,the culmination of the logical argue and debate, formulated in what we call mathematics