Is God a Mathematician? (eBook)

Mario Livio (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-1-4165-9443-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics' in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that -- mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is 'a product of human thought that is independent of experience,' how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us?

Mathematicians themselves often insist that their work has no practical effect. The British mathematician G. H. Hardy went so far as to describe his own work this way: 'No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.' He was wrong. The Hardy-Weinberg law allows population geneticists to predict how genes are transmitted from one generation to the next, and Hardy's work on the theory of numbers found unexpected implications in the development of codes.

Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.

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Bestselling author and astrophysicist Mario Livio examines the lives and theories of historys greatest mathematicians to ask howif mathematics is an abstract construction of the human mindit can so perfectly explain the physical world.Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than thatmathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is a product of human thought that is independent of experience, how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us? Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

A MYSTERY

A few years ago, I was giving a talk at Cornell University. One of my PowerPoint slides read: 'Is God a mathematician?' As soon as that slide appeared, I heard a student in the front row gasp: 'Oh God, I hope not!'

My rhetorical question was neither a philosophical attempt to define God for my audience nor a shrewd scheme to intimidate the math phobics. Rather, I was simply presenting a mystery with which some of the most original minds have struggled for centuries -- the apparent omnipresence and omnipotent powers of mathematics. These are the type of characteristics one normally associates only with a deity. As the British physicist James Jeans (1877-1946) once put it: 'The universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.' Mathematics appears to be almost too effective in describing and explaining not only the cosmos at large, but even some of the most chaotic of human enterprises.

Whether physicists are attempting to formulate theories of the universe, stock market analysts are scratching their heads to predict the next market crash, neurobiologists are constructing models of brain function, or military intelligence statisticians are trying to optimize resource allocation, they are all using mathematics. Furthermore, even though they may be applying formalisms developed in different branches of mathematics, they are still referring to the same global, coherent mathematics. What is it that gives mathematics such incredible powers? Or, as Einstein once wondered: 'How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience [the emphasis is mine], fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?'

This sense of utter bewilderment is not new. Some of the philosophers in ancient Greece, Pythagoras and Plato in particular, were already in awe of the apparent ability of mathematics to shape and guide the universe, while existing, as it seemed, above the powers of humans to alter, direct, or influence it. The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) could not hide his admiration either. In Leviathan, Hobbes's impressive exposition of what he regarded as the foundation of society and government, he singled out geometry as the paradigm of rational argument:

Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs, the more he struggles, the more belimed. And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words, which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

Millennia of impressive mathematical research and erudite philosophical speculation have done relatively little to shed light on the enigma of the power of mathematics. If anything, the mystery has in some sense even deepened. Renowned Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, for instance, now perceives not just a single, but a triple mystery. Penrose identifies three different 'worlds': the world of our conscious perceptions, the physical world, and the Platonic world of mathematical forms. The first world is the home of all of our mental images -- how we perceive the faces of our children, how we enjoy a breathtaking sunset, or how we react to the horrifying images of war. This is also the world that contains love, jealousy,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.2.2011
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Mathematik ► Geschichte der Mathematik
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Technik
• ISBN-10: 1-4165-9443-4 / 1416594434
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9443-7 / 9781416594437