Are we made of math?

What is space-time? What is a particle? I get these questions a lot. My best answer is "math". But does this mean that mathematics is real? Are we maybe even made of math? Or could it even be, as Max Tegmark has argued in his "mathematical universe Hypothesis", that all of math is real? In this video I go through what we know and what we don't know.

Correction to what I say at 4 mins 7 seconds: That should have been "irreducible representations of the Poincare group".

0:00 Intro
0:25 Which math is real?
2:52 Are particles and space-time real?
4:19 Is there more to reality than math?
5:20 Is all math real?
7:56 Sponsor message

#physics #mathematics #philosophy

[fat-zer]

1:08 just to make sure it's not hallucination: can anybody confirm that it's really German and not just some German-sounding nonsense?

[slash]

A trivial point, but Sabine's fashion choices are next level.

[KevinOMalleyisonlysmallreally]

I really really enjoyed this. Well done Sabine. "Doesn't mean it's wrong, it's just unscientific." There's a lot packed into this statement.

[sanxofon]

This video is a clear example of how hard-scientists get confused when they want to talk about subjects they "really" don't know about. Specialization has slowly separated them from being "wise men" (o "wise women"). Usually they stopped reading post-Plato philosophy and only mention Poper or Lakatos when they don't know what more to say. There are several problems in Sabine's analysis, the main one being to avoid defining what is the "opposite" of reality, is it fiction? Is it a lie? is it virtuality? For most people, the "unreal" is abstract thinking. Philosophy continued to think about the world far beyond Plato, perhaps they should read a little more about aesthetics and talk less about those who do not "really" know.

[WackyAmoebatrons]

I'd say that the Universe is not made of math, the same way that a map is not made of the area it depicts.

[cherubinth]

I am German so you speaking German makes perfect sense in my hallucinations...

[AndrewErwin]

One of my degrees is in linguistics. I have actually always thought of math as a descriptive language that we use to describe certain things (obviously at odds with Tegmark)... real is real. It is (in my mind) similar to the difference between cave paintings, more organized pictographs and hieroglyphs, and actual alphabets. What Newton and Leibniz discovered was just as real before they created the language to describe it (calculus) as it was afterwards.

Obviously the "better" the alphabet (that is, the more descriptive it can be without a priori experience), the more fluently it can be used to describe a thing. Pictographs (or even hieroglyphs) can only describe things in terms that you already understand (things you have seen and therefore recognize). With alphabets, even if you don't know the word, you can work it out and at very least have a reference for deciphering... this is how I think of math. It is a language (sometimes, not even a perfect one) that allows us to describe things in nature (like you said, the number 3 is real (at least) within certain contexts).

[danielnagy]

It amuses me, any time Sabine passes by multiverse, she kicks it. :D

[Encephalitisify]

I love this dress. It’s the perfect space time dress to talk about space time. If we are made of math, and math is made in our mind, then we are made of mind, and reality is made from the math in our mind.

[ARi-htsu]

MY subconsciousness does speak German 🇩🇪

[typha]

"Most writers on the subject seem to agree that the typical "working mathematician” is a Platonist on weekdays and a formalist on Sundays." ~ Reuben Hersh

[ForOrAgainstUs]

Math is a concept that we map onto reality. Concepts can be valid or invalid, but math as a concept isn't more real than other concepts just because it's a good map. "The map is not the territory." When you correctly describe an object in reality, the description is valid, but it's distinctly separate from the object being described.

[tbudd]

Math is real. Math can be used to model certain aspects of reality other than itself, but math is not equivalent to the things for which it models. The map is not the territory.

[PlayTheMind]

Isn’t it like asking “is English real”, speaking of the language? The words are labels to help us represent reality in our minds, or something like that.

[MartinLear_CChem_MRSC]

Thanks for these thoughts 🤓 Maths is like a language. It is a descriptive tool; sometimes accurate, sometimes not. It is in the reading that matters. Hopefully though, the writer has done a good job, so as to avoid misinterpretations and poly-meanings.

[johnkim]

Mathematics is a language that helps describe and predict what we observe. It is real in that sense and to that extent.

[jppcasey]

When I step on a scale, I silently wish those numbers were not real.

[ScotPeacock]

This is a fascinating subject. I am a former student of astrophysics and I am also a current student of Buddhist philosophy. The question, 'are we made of maths?' is very intriguing to me because it hints at the deepest tenet found in Eastern thought: that everything that we can observe is the nature of mind. It's not inside our head, as it were, but every observed phenomena is a dependent-arising, an interaction between forces and (here's the clincher) observation.

If math can be said to be real because it describes what we observe, then we can also say that we create reality to some extent because maths is also a product of thinking. However, whether math exists 'out there' or 'in our minds' doesn't really matter, but we can say it is made of parts, it has function, it is an imputed phenomena that is both conceived and observed by a consciousness. These are the five definitions of how a thing exists, according to Buddha.

I have always suspected that physics will one day make an existential breakthrough in this field. The Copenhagen Interpretation was close. This video exploring the nature of reality (from the point of view of maths), also scrapes the surface. I find it very insightful and intriguing.


Thank you again, Sabine x

[noxiouspython]

I always just assumed mathematics is a language. It can be used to describe both fiction and fact.

That is why you have solid mathematics behind many scientific theories that were proven wrong through observations.

Mathematics is as real as any language.

[theosib]

I see math as a system we have invented to abstract, symbolize, and describe our observations. There are holes in math, as demonstrated by Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. So far, there’s no reason to think the fundamental laws of the universe are incomplete. Therefore the universe seems more fundamental than math.