• it's a conceptual zoo out there

    From sobriquet@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 23 03:36:47 2024
    In particle physics, people used to refer to the particle zoo since
    there was such a bewildering variety of elementary particles that were
    being discovered in the previous century.
    Eventually things got reduced to a relatively small set of fundamental
    fermions and bosons and all other particles (like hadrons or mesons)
    were composed from these constituents (the standard model of particle
    physics).

    Can we expect something similar to happen eventually in math, given
    that there is a bewildering variety of concepts in math (like number,
    function, relation, field, ring, set, geometry, topology, algebra,
    group, graph, category, tensor, sheaf, bundle, scheme, variety, etc..).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiI8OnlBTKs

    Can we kind of distinguish between mathematical reality and mathematical fantasy or is this distinction only applicable to an empirical science
    like physics or biology (like evolution vs intelligent design)?

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  • From sobriquet@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 23 17:37:21 2024
    Op 23/06/2024 om 14:32 schreef FromTheRafters:
    sobriquet pretended :
    In particle physics, people used to refer to the particle zoo since
    there was such a bewildering variety of elementary particles that were
    being discovered in the previous century.
    Eventually things got reduced to a relatively small set of fundamental
    fermions and bosons and all other particles (like hadrons or mesons)
    were composed from these constituents (the standard model of particle
    physics).

    Can we expect something similar to happen eventually in math, given
    that there is a bewildering variety of concepts in math (like number,
    function, relation, field, ring, set, geometry, topology, algebra,
    group, graph, category, tensor, sheaf, bundle, scheme, variety, etc..).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiI8OnlBTKs

    Can we kind of distinguish between mathematical reality and
    mathematical fantasy or is this distinction only applicable to an
    empirical science like physics or biology (like evolution vs
    intelligent design)?

    I don't think so because regarding physics there is one goal, to model reality, and I believe only one reality to deal with. With mathematics
    there are endless abstractions such as the idea of endlessness itself in
    its many forms.

    I think there is still a general trend towards unification in both math
    and science.
    In both cases things get discovered and explored and when things are
    explored in more detail, often connections are discovered between
    seemingly unrelated fields that allow one to come up with a unified
    framework that underlies things that initially seemed unrelated.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxCWRAT0WKc

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  • From Mike Terry@21:1/5 to sobriquet on Sun Jun 23 17:05:42 2024
    On 23/06/2024 16:37, sobriquet wrote:
    Op 23/06/2024 om 14:32 schreef FromTheRafters:
    sobriquet pretended :
    In particle physics, people used to refer to the particle zoo since there was such a bewildering
    variety of elementary particles that were being discovered in the previous century.
    Eventually things got reduced to a relatively small set of fundamental fermions and bosons and
    all other particles (like hadrons or mesons) were composed from these constituents (the standard
    model of particle physics).

    Can we expect something similar to happen eventually in math, given
    that there is a bewildering variety of concepts in math (like number, function, relation, field,
    ring, set, geometry, topology, algebra, group, graph, category, tensor, sheaf, bundle, scheme,
    variety, etc..).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiI8OnlBTKs

    Can we kind of distinguish between mathematical reality and mathematical fantasy or is this
    distinction only applicable to an empirical science like physics or biology (like evolution vs
    intelligent design)?

    I don't think so because regarding physics there is one goal, to model reality, and I believe only
    one reality to deal with. With mathematics there are endless abstractions such as the idea of
    endlessness itself in its many forms.

    I think there is still a general trend towards unification in both math and science.
    In both cases things get discovered and explored and when things are
    explored in more detail, often connections are discovered between seemingly unrelated fields that
    allow one to come up with a unified framework that underlies things that initially seemed unrelated.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxCWRAT0WKc


    What does happen is that lecturers teach their material to students year upon year upon year, and
    over time the ideas and methods are distilled to become more efficient from a teaching perspective.
    Theorems that were once long and complicated are approached in a more efficient way, and the proofs
    may turn out to be quite short. Often the shortness hides a wealth of smaller results, but still
    there is a big improvement in understandability, and the connections between areas become better
    understood.

    I doubt all the above would be unified into /just/ one concept, because they reflect different
    interests in what is being studied. That doesn't mean they won't be seen as aspects of some simpler
    ideas - for example when I studied maths all the above were seen as sets. However that didn't mean
    there was just one course (on set theory) that covered all the above - even though you might say
    "aha - everything is just a set, so that's it." (At that time category threory was a bit too new to
    base the entire degree on, but I imagine these days category theory provides a similar (better?)
    unififying view of the various areas, like set theory in my study days. But still there are
    numbers, topologies, sets, manifolds, rings etc.).



    Mike.

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  • From sobriquet@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 30 01:50:04 2024
    Op 23/06/2024 om 22:42 schreef Ross Finlayson:
    On 06/23/2024 09:05 AM, Mike Terry wrote:
    On 23/06/2024 16:37, sobriquet wrote:
    Op 23/06/2024 om 14:32 schreef FromTheRafters:
    sobriquet pretended :
    In particle physics, people used to refer to the particle zoo since
    there was such a bewildering variety of elementary particles that
    were being discovered in the previous century.
    Eventually things got reduced to a relatively small set of
    fundamental fermions and bosons and all other particles (like
    hadrons or mesons) were composed from these constituents (the
    standard model of particle physics).

    Can we expect something similar to happen eventually in math, given
    that there is a bewildering variety of concepts in math (like
    number, function, relation, field, ring, set, geometry, topology,
    algebra, group, graph, category, tensor, sheaf, bundle, scheme,
    variety, etc..).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiI8OnlBTKs

    Can we kind of distinguish between mathematical reality and
    mathematical fantasy or is this distinction only applicable to an
    empirical science like physics or biology (like evolution vs
    intelligent design)?

    I don't think so because regarding physics there is one goal, to
    model reality, and I believe only one reality to deal with. With
    mathematics there are endless abstractions such as the idea of
    endlessness itself in its many forms.

    I think there is still a general trend towards unification in both
    math and science.
    In both cases things get discovered and explored and when things are
    explored in more detail, often connections are discovered between
    seemingly unrelated fields that allow one to come up with a unified
    framework that underlies things that initially seemed unrelated.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxCWRAT0WKc


    What does happen is that lecturers teach their material to students year
    upon year upon year, and over time the ideas and methods are distilled
    to become more efficient from a teaching perspective. Theorems that were
    once long and complicated are approached in a more efficient way, and
    the proofs may turn out to be quite short.  Often the shortness hides a
    wealth of smaller results, but still there is a big improvement in
    understandability, and the connections between areas become better
    understood.

    I doubt all the above would be unified into /just/ one concept, because
    they reflect different interests in what is being studied.  That doesn't
    mean they won't be seen as aspects of some simpler ideas - for example
    when I studied maths all the above were seen as sets.  However that
    didn't mean there was just one course (on set theory) that covered all
    the above - even though you might say "aha - everything is just a set,
    so that's it."  (At that time category threory was a bit too new to base
    the entire degree on, but I imagine these days category theory provides
    a similar (better?) unififying view of the various areas, like set
    theory in my study days.  But still there are numbers, topologies, sets,
    manifolds, rings etc.).



    Mike.





    The (descriptive) set theory and (descriptive) category theory
    in their usual formalisms are mostly "equi-interpretable" and
    "conservative" with respect to each other, though there's a
    particular development in category theory about the Identity
    functor [0,1] that results a sort of "clock arithmetic" about it,
    that in the set-theory-wise is put off to Jordan measure and
    line-elements of the line-element in usually time-ordering.

    The idea of "univalency" in "homotopy type theory" in "category
    theory", is basically for "infinite union" the illative where
    otherwise there's only "pair-wise" union. It's said that this
    would result a category theory with "the strength of ZF together
    with two large cardinal axioms", where, large cardinals are neither
    cardinals nor sets, in set theory. It's sort of like the
    "projective determinacy" in the set theory, though, kind
    of coming down instead of up, as it were.

    So, you usually won't find anybody saying there's anything at
    all different between "descriptive set theory" and "descriptive
    category theory", both as applications of "model theory", as
    with regards to that usually it's deemed they are "equi-interpretable"
    in the sense of only modeling each other, because, anything that
    doesn't, has the consequences to the validity and consistency
    of the theory, with regards to non-standard and extra-ordinary things.

    Shortcuts like "Dedekind cuts" and so on, some find un-palatable.

    Most of the exploration of the logical has been in terms
    of set theories, where it may be reflected that Mirimanoff's
    "extra-ordinary" reflects the standard and non-standard,
    while Skolem is usually ascribed to extension and collapse,
    of models, in terms of the transfinite, and about whether
    there's not even a "standard" model of integers, at all.
    (Only extensions and fragments.)


    Maybe sets and categories are two complementary universal ways of
    encoding conceptual structure (where sets are focused on the internal
    structure of concepts, while categories are focused on the way concepts interrelate to one another).

    https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGreek/comments/146e725/pythagoras_all_is_number/

    It also seems to echo claims from math history that everything can be considered a number (kind of like the observation that all content
    people exchange online are just a bunch of large numbers, regardless of potential interpretations as books, images, movies, apps, songs, 3d
    models, etc..).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_r0bXrbddw

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  • From Stefan Ram@21:1/5 to sobriquet on Fri Jul 19 14:06:23 2024
    sobriquet <dohduhdah@yahoo.com> wrote or quoted:
    In particle physics, people used to refer to the particle zoo since
    . . .
    Can we expect something similar to happen eventually in math, given
    . . .

    I don't think so, because math has this reduction of
    entities build in right from the start. The mathematical
    structures are composed exactly in such a manner as to
    avoid unnecessary repetitions and redundancies, and in
    a sense that's the reason there are so many of them.

    You could avoid the terms by giving your preconditions anew
    each and every time. So, instead of, "Let G be a group, ",
    you'd say, "Let (M,+) be a pair so that ...". So you would
    not need to introduce the term "group". But this wouldn't
    make reading the text any easier! You could then even avoid the
    term "pair" by writing a certain kind of set instead. So in the
    end, maybe you would only need basic concepts of set theory.
    But in most cases, it would be impossible to write or read
    such a text, just as it would make it impossible to understand
    a detective story to tell it by describing all the quarks and
    gluons the detective is made of and how they move in time.

    Can we kind of distinguish between mathematical reality and mathematical >fantasy

    In mathematical reality, all your concepts need to be clearly defined
    and all you assertions need to be free from contradictions.

    In mathematical fantasy, you could have vague concepts and admit
    contradictions.

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