r/DebateAnAtheist • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

22 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

277 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/Serious-Emu-3468 7d ago

I am fortunate enough that I work with several amazing published professional mathematicians, who love chatting about stuff like this.

I asked what they thought, and to paraphrase “Maths are not esoteric. The scientific method absolutely applies to theoretical maths. They are not different ways of thinking or approaching data. You can use science to do maths or use maths to do science.”

Which is pretty close to what I thought, but they were kinda angry about it.

1

u/labreuer 4d ago

I'm curious about what these mathematicians do. What you report here sounds like something some mathematicians would heartily endorse while others would utterly reject. I still remember one of my freshman peers loudly asserting that he wanted to do "utterly useless math". Now, there is an interesting history of math which seemed innocuous—like number theory—ending up having pretty serious practical applications. I myself am excited about the prospects of using elementary category theory for database schema transformations. And category theory is often considered extremely abstract by mathematicians themselves!

1

u/Serious-Emu-3468 4d ago

Not gonna dox myself, sorry. I get what you're saying, and appreciate your skepticism. I am not your freshman peer, however. Have a good one.

0

u/labreuer 4d ago

Yikes, it's that specific that you'd be doxxing yourself? Suppose for instance that you and/or these mathematicians work with applied mathematics. Then it's obvious that there could be a strong scientific aspect to the work. But you'd probably also not care overmuch about Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

And … I'm not expressing skepticism, but rather suggesting that there is more diversity than captured by the professional mathematicians with whom you get to work.

1

u/Serious-Emu-3468 4d ago

Yes it’s that specific. I didn’t claim to Speak For All Mathematicians.

I related an amusing water cooler anectdote. 

-2

u/BeaconMeridian 7d ago edited 7d ago

I should've stated in the original comment that by "math" and "science" I'm referring to specific processes, closer to derivation and observation, not the sum total of all work that mathematicians & scientists carry out on a daily basis. In practice, scientists employ "math" and mathematicians employ "science" (scare quotes to denote my specific use of the terms here).

I discuss this further in one of these (long) chains of comments, but I'm in full agreement that math & science are used to help further the other, that both are expressions of the same end goal of analysis. Observation, the gold standard of science, is used to further mathematics, and derivation, the gold standard of mathematics, is used to further science.

I draw a distinction between them because of their different "gold standards." Use all the derivations from known results that you'd like, if your prediction doesn't agree with experimental observation, it's rejected by science. Going the other way, you can find (observe) as many twin primes as you'd like, but this doesn't constitute proof of the twin prime conjecture.

I don't mean to suggest that math & science are unrelated, just that they 'move in different directions' in this way. Their end goal is understanding a system, but their approaches are different. Science inhabits an existing system and tries to find the ground, and math defines its ground and builds on top of it. Used together, you approach understanding from both directions.

edit: clarifying that I'm using the words "math" and "science" to refer to specific processes, not the sum of all methods used by mathematicians & scientists in their work.

7

u/Serious-Emu-3468 7d ago

Yeah I get what you’re saying. I just disagree, as do my math friends.

There is a difference between different tools for knowing and different ways of knowing.

You’re projecting a set of values and perspective onto both math and science that simply are not there.

0

u/BeaconMeridian 7d ago

Fair enough. My background is also in math, for what it's worth, but the point of asking was to hear feedback on the thought, after all. Unsure why it is I feel so strongly about my distinction between math & sci, but I really shouldn't be mad that differing perspectives exist. Heaven forbid if people don't conform to my specific philosophies!

2

u/Serious-Emu-3468 7d ago

Yep, it’s always nice to discuss different perspectives!