The unusual mathematics that gives rose petals their shape | Hacker News Reader

The unusual mathematics that gives rose petals their shape

nature.com

20 pointsgnabgib9 comments

mandatory rant:

mathematics did NOT give anything to anything.

mathematics found out way to express naturally occurring pattern, without knowing what phenomena is behind creation of that pattern.

mathematics is not creating worlds, universes. mathematics in not physics. mathematics is not biology.

"good" language leads to "good" and logical thinking in every area of human endeavor.

Nah. There's harmony and order in the unfolding of the universe. Mathematics can refer to both the symbols used to express that order as well as the order itself.

refer is not making it happen.

title says mathematics is that thing which gives form to something which does not rely on mathematics. mathematics is human construct to help us to do work in sciences or real life. mathematics is not in any shape or form innate to universe.

you are expressing it in your head, or my head or someones head. expressing in this context does not mean you are MAKING, BUILDING it in real life FROM mathematics, nor BECAUSE OF mathematics.

i mean universe as spacetime we occupy, not as marvel universe, words can have multiple meanings a lot of times even contradictory meanings between disciplines.

Totally right. It should be "structure". Maths is just its description in a specific language.

Thats still debateable. There is a phenomenological Mathematical description, called statistics and there are Things Like the Schrödinger ewuations or Maxwell's ewuations. These Things can capture the underlying pattern.

I think its entirely possible that shrodingers equations are phenomenological in nature.

What a pedantic point to make.

not like that. i do not care about math in that post.

"good" language leads to "good" and logical thinking in every area of human endeavor.

so it can also be true that "bad" language leads to "bad" thinking. you are making mistakes, making bad conclusions, which can be avoided just by using "proper" language. why make life harder.

that applies for "everything" from "marketing vs scam", to even philosophy itself,

edit: we live in complex world, stacking complexities on top of complexities, so being "20% wrong" in one layer of complexities, can lead to totally opposite result in another layer.

It's not pedantic, it's true, and it actually is deeply important because misunderstanding this can lead to very different beliefs about the world, science, and technology.

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