As Nuñez and Lakoff wrote in Where Mathematics Comes From - Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Mathematics_Comes_From> math is just a language we use to describe things. I tis not fundamental. And science is about a tentative understanding (or faith) that is contextual and not absolute. The challenge is escaping the reductionistic assumption that understanding the parts gives you an understanding of the whole when the closer you look at the less meaning there is – as in seeing bits in isolation tells you nothing about their contextual meaning. And, to me, the scientific method is simple, oops, I’ll try again and not formulaic as they attempted to teach me in high school. Falsifiability is a useful heuristic but not fundamental.
I wrote https://rmf.vc/IEEEAgeOfSoftware for those interested in a deeper dive. From: Silklist <silklist-bounces+silklist=bobf.frankston....@lists.digeratus.in> On Behalf Of Tim Bray via Silklist Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2024 21:02 To: Charles Haynes <charles.hay...@gmail.com> Cc: Tim Bray <tb...@textuality.com>; Intelligent conversation <silklist@lists.digeratus.in> Subject: Re: [Silk] A religion for atheists I remember I was giving a lecture on how TLS web security worked and I pointed out “there’s no science here, it’s about corners of math like number theory that everyone thought were useless wanking until recently”. Which is to say, my notion of “faith” is something like “inexplicable by the scientific method”, which in practice means “not based on falsifiable hypotheses”. Math is useful but doesn’t do that and also doesn’t claim to necessarily correspond to reality as we experience it. As far as I know, science’s only axiom is the inductive principle, i.e. that the universe is consistent and thus you can generalize from the specific. On Jan 14, 2024 at 5:54:36 PM, Charles Haynes <charles.hay...@gmail.com <mailto:charles.hay...@gmail.com> > wrote: Ah, ok. How much of the theoretical foundations of math are you familiar with? The 9 axioms of ZFC are the things that underly math that no one can prove. Sort of by definition. Which is one way if getting around the "faith" argument in math. Those axioms are "definitional" if you like rather than "taken on faith" but whatever you call them they're things everyone who uses math accepts as true - but can't possibly prove. BTW formal Buddhism is pretty empirical. The Dalai Lama has famously said (paraphrasing) "if science can show reincarnation is not true, we must abandon it." On the other hand Buddhism as practiced is full of superstition (as I'm sure you well know.) Anyway, I like to use ZFC to examine how anti-faith supposed rationalists are. I find the philosophy of science fascinating. On Mon, 15 Jan 2024, 1:51 pm Tim Bray, <tb...@textuality.com <mailto:tb...@textuality.com> > wrote: On Jan 14, 2024 at 3:56:01 PM, Charles Haynes <charles.hay...@gmail.com <mailto:charles.hay...@gmail.com> > wrote: In that piece you seem to be conflating "Faith" and "Religion." Do you think that faith always implies religion? I personally define faith as "things I believe that are true but that I can't prove" and it seems to me that doesn't particularly imply religion - unless you define religion so broadly that it becomes the same as faith. Haha, I believe in lots of things I don’t understand let alone can prove, for example how airplanes fly and how electrical infrastructure works. I think I was writing about the large class of things that people believe that nobody can provide an evidence-based proof for. Which I think is mostly religion? Or if you prefer, the “supernatural”.
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