/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #11354150

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Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 13:31:38 2020 No.11354150 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>11354273 >>11354342 >>11354347 >>11354524 >>11354554 >>11354783

what is a number? inb4 a manmade concept: so they wouldn't exist without men?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 14:50:13 No.11354273 Report

Quoted By: >>11354396

>>11354150

Animals have been shown the ability to count in tests, and even be able to ''group'' shapes and forms that are similar together. So the concept of numbers is not man-made but brain-made.

It is likely the brain recognising patterns that make up the universe and creating a language that allows us and other animals to benefit from it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 15:24:04 No.11354342 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354150
Numbers are a model, which does make them a manmade concept. However, it is an observable fact that there are things out in the world that behave like the numbers. For example, countable objects like apples act like the natural numbers no matter who is counting them or what they believe. So numbers are a manmade thing, but the usefulness of certain number systems for certain purposes in the physical world is not

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 15:26:11 No.11354347 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354150
Numbers are a model, which does make them a manmade mental concept. However, it is an observable fact that there are things out in the world that behave like the numbers. For example, countable objects like apples act like the natural numbers no matter who is counting them or what they believe. So numbers are a manmade thing, but the usefulness of certain systems of numbers for certain purposes in the physical world is not

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 16:00:26 No.11354396 Report

Quoted By: >>11354501

>>11354273
with "men" I meant every other being or the general; would the laws of logic (thus of mathematics) exist before the big bang?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 16:50:21 No.11354501 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354396

Who could possibly answer that? I certainly can't

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 17:00:31 No.11354524 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354150
See
>>11350548

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 17:11:19 No.11354554 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354150
Numbers are amounts we've assigned names and symbols to. The amounts are real but the names and symbols are cultural associations.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 18:36:51 No.11354734 Report

Quoted By: >>11354751

If by numbers you mean natural numbers, you can think of them like this. Say there is at least one number. Say you also have a operation called "next", that when applied to a number, gives you a different number. The natural numbers are all the possible results of applying this process.

This line of thinking can be made to correspond to Peano's axioms; thus a number in modern mathematics just an interesting way to combine the more primitive notions of "object", "next/successor", and "set/collection."

The more interesting question is, what is a notion? Numbers are quite easy to describe in the language of sets and logic, but sets and logic can only really be described in one another in a weird, self-recursive way. It can't be turtles all the way down; at some level people just know what properties a collection should have, and what And should mean, and so on. Even then, our intuitions about collections aren't even on the money; see Russell's paradox.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 18:43:31 No.11354751 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354734
this is resolved if you try the following (like the Peano axioms) -
take the empty set
how many elements are there in total? zero.
Consider a set to be like an element
Then how many elements are there? one, because we have the empty set.
Then how many elements are there?
two, because we have the empty set and the number 1, which is the number of elements we counted the first time around.
Then how many elements are there?
Three, because we have the empty set and the numbers 1 and 2.
Just count up from there.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 18:55:50 No.11354783 Report

Quoted By:

>>11354150
The universe wouldn't exist, and doesn't exist, when no one is observing it.

#YesAllHolograms #FuckYeahQuantumPhysics #HowCanOurEyesBe3DifBlackHolesAre2D

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 19:26:09 No.11354869 Report

Quoted By:

Every man made construct is based on a logical concept that exists independent of us. We simply put it in words (or numbers), but logic is transcendent, it always existed and always will independent of us.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 02 Feb 2020 19:35:00 No.11354900 Report

Quoted By:

They exist in the platonic realm-

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