You want to speak with a Spaniard, you learn Spanish. You want to frolic in France, you learn French. You want to commune with the cosmos, you learn Mathematics — the language of the Universe.
Totally agree. I do not need @neiltyson or anyone else to tell me how to "commune with the
cosmos". Humans were doing this long before he took Calculus. pic.twitter.com/oxT13zoT0m
It’s not, no. But it’s important to point out that scientists from Einstein and, lately, and especially, Greene are singing the paeans to Goddess Math.
In some ways this misses the point. I will say that Calculus was one of the most awe-inspiring courses I ever took. It is a stunning achievement.
But I will also say that Plato’s discussions about Beauty, Virgil’s “Aeneid’, and countless other poets have brought meaning to this crazy place we live in.
I think NDT made a poor word choice. That’s it. I also think it’s mistake to compare the beauty of math or the works of great mathematicians to the works of Plato, Virgil, or any other writers, poets, or whatever. It’s a completely apples and oranges comparison. and it’s also one that rests entirely on opinion, not on any objective analysis.
I’ve seen enough really ugly math to disagree. A derivation or proof can be very cumbersome and convoluted, while a different approach can get the same answer in a very subtle and elegant way. That’s esthetics in mathematics, and I’m not opposed to comparing it to esthetics in poetry.
I guess the “at lest not for me” is critical. For anything involving esthetics, personal opinions are involved. So I can say that mathematical elegance is on par with elegance in poetry. You can disagree. And there is no “right” opinion on the subject. In the same way, there is no “right” opinion about whether Brecht or Ibsen wrote better plays. I guess this is just something we have to agree to disagree about.
Are personal opinions always involved? Consider music. I’ve always found it fascinating that while most of us aren’t necessarily accomplished musicians every last one of us will discern a discordant note in a melodious song or symphony. How is this so? Something common to all allows us to judge the rightness or wrongness of something created.
Though it has nice spiritual intent, using the strict definition of the word “commune” does not seem possible when the definition refers to the interchange or communication between objects (most commonly people), and unless the “Cosmos” is replying to you then we need another word. Yet, a second definition, that being “a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities” might be more apt if humanity really ever learns to live in harmony with itself, which altogether is just a subset of the Cosmos.
Much as I (usually) like the guy, Neil Tyson is more celebrity these days than scientist. I’m pretty sure you don’t have to be a math genius to “commune with the cosmos”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Sure you can use math to “understand” the universe, but it’s never going to “understand” you anyway, so I agree with Donald Barker (below) that there is no two-way communication happening, even if you’re a math genius.
Indeed, “commune” was a poor choice of words, presumably solely for the alliteration.
On the other hand, if he’d said, “try to understand,” he would have had better parallelism with the terrestrial languages analogy, as well as a pretty solid case for the minimum requirements for understanding space.
One definition of “commune” is to be “in spiritual contact with.” I suspect that where NDT is headed with this however, being a spiritual matter, I suspect mathematics will be at its least useful. This is just NDT searching for a sound-bite, IMHO.
I didn’t think Tyson is using the literal meaning of commune. I think he means it in a scientific sense. As a science communicator, he knows full well that people can understand in broad strokes how the Universe came to be and why it behaves as it does without math. However, of someone wants to understand the fine details, math will be necessary.
“However, of someone wants to understand the fine details, math will be necessary.”
Please prove the truth of that assertion using either the scientific method or foundational mathematics. Tyson is the poster-child of “scientism” run amok…IMHO, of course.
What I meant was to have a working understanding of of the science that describes the Universe, you need math. Without the math you can’t interpret results from the equations that mathematically describe the behavior, and you can’t manipulate those equations to calculate different values for different variables.
I’ll let you decide whether that distinction is important to you or not.
I agree that mathematics is necessary for understanding the science that describes our physical Universe. However, science is not sufficient to understand all of reality…and that is where, IMHO, Tyson goes off the rails. I hope you didn’t take offense at my previous comment/reply, as it was primarily directed at the unfounded positivism and scientism espoused by Tyson.
Well, opinions on what the scientific method is, exactly, differ. But I would say comparing theories and data is pretty central. And the difference from older sorts of natural philosophy is that the theoretical predictions are specific and detailed, that the comparisons are quantitative not qualitative, and some real attention to uncertainties (to know if differences are significant.) All that requires a nontrivial amount of math.
He went to university to learn chemistry/biology/botany in order to better understand what he was seeing. Which kind of proves Tyson’s point. Even someone like Muir needed to learn the right “language” in order to truly “hear” the world.
Now Neil. It’s been said that math has similarities to faith. A circle does not exist, nor has one ever existed. Yet we believe in circles and in what circles represent. We draw them with icons because we can’t draw an actual circle. Math itself has existed for eternity. Humans did not invent math, we discovered some of it. We continue to, possibly forever. Belief in eternity and non-physical entities are not just for religion. Math students too must embrace them, in part…..
So for something to “exist” its components must have been born inside a dying star? And what about dark matter, or other things you cant see? Anyway, math is a language and a tool.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
— Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”
Now all that said, I do appreciate what astrophysics has done to reveal and explain the varied phenomena in the Universe. So i think there’s room for both approaches. But to suggest that one approach is better than the other, or that it is the only way to “commune with the universe,” is flat-out false.
It is the case these days that cosmology – the Queen of Sciences – is largely informed by predictive equation over observation (no, I’m not forgetting the cosmic background), as very smart people try to understand the way things work.
#hubris, indeed
Never quite grasped the leap from using Mathematics to quantify the Universe to the Universe being a mathematical construct.
That’s not implied in NDT’s statement.
It’s not, no. But it’s important to point out that scientists from Einstein and, lately, and especially, Greene are singing the paeans to Goddess Math.
In some ways this misses the point. I will say that Calculus was one of the most awe-inspiring courses I ever took. It is a stunning achievement.
But I will also say that Plato’s discussions about Beauty, Virgil’s “Aeneid’, and countless other poets have brought meaning to this crazy place we live in.
I think NDT made a poor word choice. That’s it. I also think it’s mistake to compare the beauty of math or the works of great mathematicians to the works of Plato, Virgil, or any other writers, poets, or whatever. It’s a completely apples and oranges comparison. and it’s also one that rests entirely on opinion, not on any objective analysis.
I’ve seen enough really ugly math to disagree. A derivation or proof can be very cumbersome and convoluted, while a different approach can get the same answer in a very subtle and elegant way. That’s esthetics in mathematics, and I’m not opposed to comparing it to esthetics in poetry.
I absolutely agree there’s beauty, aesthetics in math. It’s just not objectively comparable to poetry or literature, at least not for me.
I guess the “at lest not for me” is critical. For anything involving esthetics, personal opinions are involved. So I can say that mathematical elegance is on par with elegance in poetry. You can disagree. And there is no “right” opinion on the subject. In the same way, there is no “right” opinion about whether Brecht or Ibsen wrote better plays. I guess this is just something we have to agree to disagree about.
Are personal opinions always involved? Consider music. I’ve always found it fascinating that while most of us aren’t necessarily accomplished musicians every last one of us will discern a discordant note in a melodious song or symphony. How is this so? Something common to all allows us to judge the rightness or wrongness of something created.
You showed him for encouraging people to study math!
The end does not justify the means, IMHO.
How to actually encourage people to study math: https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://misterwootube.com/
Though it has nice spiritual intent, using the strict definition of the word “commune” does not seem possible when the definition refers to the interchange or communication between objects (most commonly people), and unless the “Cosmos” is replying to you then we need another word.
Yet, a second definition, that being “a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities” might be more apt if humanity really ever learns to live in harmony with itself, which altogether is just a subset of the Cosmos.
Much as I (usually) like the guy, Neil Tyson is more celebrity these days than scientist. I’m pretty sure you don’t have to be a math genius to “commune with the cosmos”, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Sure you can use math to “understand” the universe, but it’s never going to “understand” you anyway, so I agree with Donald Barker (below) that there is no two-way communication happening, even if you’re a math genius.
Indeed, “commune” was a poor choice of words, presumably solely for the alliteration.
On the other hand, if he’d said, “try to understand,” he would have had better parallelism with the terrestrial languages analogy, as well as a pretty solid case for the minimum requirements for understanding space.
One definition of “commune” is to be “in spiritual contact with.” I suspect that where NDT is headed with this however, being a spiritual matter, I suspect mathematics will be at its least useful. This is just NDT searching for a sound-bite, IMHO.
I didn’t think Tyson is using the literal meaning of commune. I think he means it in a scientific sense. As a science communicator, he knows full well that people can understand in broad strokes how the Universe came to be and why it behaves as it does without math. However, of someone wants to understand the fine details, math will be necessary.
“However, of someone wants to understand the fine details, math will be necessary.”
Please prove the truth of that assertion using either the scientific method or foundational mathematics. Tyson is the poster-child of “scientism” run amok…IMHO, of course.
What I meant was to have a working understanding of of the science that describes the Universe, you need math. Without the math you can’t interpret results from the equations that mathematically describe the behavior, and you can’t manipulate those equations to calculate different values for different variables.
I’ll let you decide whether that distinction is important to you or not.
I agree that mathematics is necessary for understanding the science that describes our physical Universe. However, science is not sufficient to understand all of reality…and that is where, IMHO, Tyson goes off the rails. I hope you didn’t take offense at my previous comment/reply, as it was primarily directed at the unfounded positivism and scientism espoused by Tyson.
Well, opinions on what the scientific method is, exactly, differ. But I would say comparing theories and data is pretty central. And the difference from older sorts of natural philosophy is that the theoretical predictions are specific and detailed, that the comparisons are quantitative not qualitative, and some real attention to uncertainties (to know if differences are significant.) All that requires a nontrivial amount of math.
Ask John Muir how to commune with the Cosmos.
He went to university to learn chemistry/biology/botany in order to better understand what he was seeing. Which kind of proves Tyson’s point. Even someone like Muir needed to learn the right “language” in order to truly “hear” the world.
Now Neil. It’s been said that math has similarities to faith. A circle does not exist, nor has one ever existed. Yet we believe in circles and in what circles represent. We draw them with icons because we can’t draw an actual circle. Math itself has existed for eternity. Humans did not invent math, we discovered some of it. We continue to, possibly forever. Belief in eternity and non-physical entities are not just for religion. Math students too must embrace them, in part…..
So for something to “exist” its components must have been born inside a dying star? And what about dark matter, or other things you cant see? Anyway, math is a language and a tool.
“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is
queerer than we can suppose.”
J. B. S. Haldane
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
— Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”
Now all that said, I do appreciate what astrophysics has done to reveal and explain the varied phenomena in the Universe. So i think there’s room for both approaches. But to suggest that one approach is better than the other, or that it is the only way to “commune with the universe,” is flat-out false.
It is the case these days that cosmology – the Queen of Sciences – is largely informed by predictive equation over observation (no, I’m not forgetting the cosmic background), as very smart people try to understand the way things work.