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Comment by nonbel | Hacker News Reader

"Math" is just a language designed for deductive logic. Lots of science is now being done in other (programming) languages that can fill the same role. Is "math" still special?

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First, "a language designed for deductive logic" is not remotely what math is.

Second, programming is a limited subset of discrete mathematics.

Third, the underpinning of all that science is still math.

Until theorem proving is as easy in a programming language as it is in plain old math (last I checked, dependently typed languages were still verbose and cumbersome for this purpose), then Yes, math will still be special because it is the proofs that make it special (also, not all proofs use deductive logic).

The physicist Max Tegemark claims that the only real properties are mathematical properties. Notice how much physics relies on math. What are the properties of an electron? An electron is understood mathematically.

Yeah, mathematics seems rather meta. If the universe/multiverse we live in turns out to be a simulation, if every scientific discovery turns out to be incorrect, etc....set theory remains. There is something incredibly powerful and beautiful about that.

Though to get from "every natural law we've been able to characterise so far has turned out to be mathematical in nature" to Tegmark's "nature is literally mathematics" is a big leap that many people are not willing to take.

Math is not a language. Mathematical notation is a language, used to describe math. Programming languages are notations for describing particular mathematical objects.

Yes. Math is an universal language. Programming languages are either domain-specific by design or you extend them until they become maths again.

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