Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:25PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:25PM (#621883)

    There is no boom without physics, and to understand physics you need to be fluent in math. Chemistry is your first abstraction layer, followed by biology. After that, everything is politics

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:27PM (5 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:27PM (#621938) Journal

    Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @04:25PM

      by Wootery (2341) on Monday January 15 2018, @04:25PM (#622604)

      Obligatory SMBC. [smbc-comics.com]

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:13AM (3 children)

      by acid andy (1683) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:13AM (#627495) Homepage Journal

      He missed off philosophy. If done properly, it's arguably more fundamental than mathematics. The trouble is, it's frequently not done rigorously enough and is an umbrella term for lots of fields so not sure where that would put it in the "purity" stakes.

      --
      Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 25 2018, @04:40PM (2 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 25 2018, @04:40PM (#627741) Journal

        He missed off philosophy. If done properly, it's arguably more fundamental than mathematics.

        I'm not so sure (at least with mathematics as it is done today). After all, philosophers still claim to say something about the world, the humans, etc., while mathematics is about abstract ideas that need not have any relation to reality.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:21PM (1 child)

          by acid andy (1683) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:21PM (#627760) Homepage Journal

          That's a good point but some branches of philosophy focus solely on abstract concepts too e.g. philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language. I'm sure there's a lot of crossover between mathematics and philosophy. I suppose logic is one of the biggest areas of intersection. You could even make a case that those who first derived the rules of logic were doing philosophy.

          --
          Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
          • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 26 2018, @02:41AM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday January 26 2018, @02:41AM (#628046) Homepage

            I took a 100-level philosophy class 10 years before I took discrete math, and the first third of that discrete math class was the material from that philosophy class. Philosophy has a bad rap for being a bunch of stoners mentally masturbating around paradoxes and opinions, but philosophy also has rules and structure.

            Were the early mathematicians philosphers, or vise-versa?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:58PM (#623317)

    Biologists think they are biochemists,
    Biochemists think they are Physical Chemists,
    Physical Chemists think they are Physicists,
    Physicists think they are Gods,
    And God thinks he is a Mathematician.

    Or, another (shorter) way it goes:

    Physicists defer only to mathematicians, mathematicians defer only to God.