Mathematic Fallacy

[Feared_1]

Math is not fiction. Math is perfect and applies itself in every aspect of life.
Addition does not undo division. If you divide 1 atom by 2, you have to multiply to get 1 back.

I'm switched over to Math Education major a while back, so I've developed a love for it.

EDIT: By the way, I edited my first post to give more information.

[Clavin12]

Thats what they thought 300 years ago, but we advanced from there.

[Avatar]

Math is the perfect language, the ultimate expression of reality, the purest music in the universe.

We speak it with a terrible lisp, though... 
We are blinded, and have but the dimmest glimpse of true reality... 
We are tone deaf and can only imagine we understand how pure and beautiful the music of the spheres truly is...

Our understanding of the universe, especially the mathematics of it, is crude at best.  We're just infants looking out of our cribs at the wonder that is reality.

The true shame is that we think we know it all.  We have such confidence in our world view, and of course anything or anyone that contradicts it is heretical. 

It's always been this way.  Right now there are those among us rising to defend our paltry knowledge...  but anyone who's studied history will see that every year something new is learned, and something thought to be unshakeable truth is shaken to bits...

-Av-

[mrtwosheds]

Clearly you have not understood what I am saying.

If you divide 1 atom by 2, you have to multiply to get 1 back.

So multiplying the spectrum of radiations and energy's produced by dividing an atom makes another atom?, its not that simple.
Maths looks perfect when expressed as itself. Reality is allot more messy, things explode if you add them together to hard or turn into something else entirely when you divide them. Ultimately math exists only in our heads, calculations are just graphite on wood pulp, or photons hitting a retina. The idea is perfect and very very useful to anything capable of using it, but it is, like all of our thoughts, just another story we tell ourselves. A magnificent Non-thing, powerful but as fragile as we are ourselves and utterly irrelevant to 99.999999' % of the universe.

[Red Devil]

Math is the perfect language, the ultimate expression of reality, the purest music in the universe.

We speak it with a terrible lisp, though... 
We are blinded, and have but the dimmest glimpse of true reality... 
We are tone deaf and can only imagine we understand how pure and beautiful the music of the spheres truly is...

Our understanding of the universe, especially the mathematics of it, is crude at best.  We're just infants looking out of our cribs at the wonder that is reality.

The true shame is that we think we know it all.  We have such confidence in our world view, and of course anything or anyone that contradicts it is heretical. 

It's always been this way.  Right now there are those among us rising to defend our paltry knowledge...  but anyone who's studied history will see that every year something new is learned, and something thought to be unshakeable truth is shaken to bits...

-Av-

..and that's the beauty of it all. 

"This, too, shall pass."

Very well put, Av. :thumbsup:

[sabrebattletank]

I don't think that .9' is exactly 1, just that their difference is less than infinitessimly small.

That's a quantity that language expresses just fine, but math doesn't.

[Red Devil]

If a baseball bat that's missing one atom hits you in your face, does it still hurt?

[VSMIT]

Noooo.........

[sabrebattletank]

Depends on which atom was missing.

[Feared_1]

Clearly you have not understood what I am saying. So multiplying the spectrum of radiations and energy's produced by dividing an atom makes another atom?, its not that simple.
Maths looks perfect when expressed as itself. Reality is allot more messy, things explode if you add them together to hard or turn into something else entirely when you divide them. Ultimately math exists only in our heads, calculations are just graphite on wood pulp, or photons hitting a retina. The idea is perfect and very very useful to anything capable of using it, but it is, like all of our thoughts, just another story we tell ourselves. A magnificent Non-thing, powerful but as fragile as we are ourselves and utterly irrelevant to 99.999999' % of the universe.

I think this is funny because you are SO wrong. Math is EVERYTHING. I can't tell you how to apply it, but I can tell you that it can be applied. Just because you don't know how to apply it doesn't mean its irrelevant. Avatar has it right.

EDIT:
Yes, .999... (repeating FOREVER) is exactly 1.
1/3 = .333... (repeating forever)

Look at the "multiply by 10" rule I have up there somewhere.

[Clavin12]

Is math love?

[Feared_1]

Yes, I love math

[Nielk1]

I don't think that .9' is exactly 1, just that their difference is less than infinitessimly small.

That's a quantity that language expresses just fine, but math doesn't.

.9' is not 1
.3' + .6' is not .9'

[ScarleTomato]

.9' is not 1
.3' + .6' is not .9'

Great thing about math... if you're going to say anything about it, you have to prove it.

[AHadley]

Avatar got it right on the head. Our science is imperfect because we are imperfect.