Hi Guys today I thought of delving
into something unconventional, something in your anger after or during a Calculus or Algebra test you have silently thought to yourself that is, DOES MATHEMATICS EVEN EXIST. Hold your keypads and brace yourself because the answer is quite complex and interesting.
First let me ask you before you read further in the COMMENT SECTION to leave you answer to whether you think mathematics exists or not, before you start reading and another to tell us if you have changed your mind and if you did why you changed your MIND AFTER YOU READ THIS Post.
[@anthonyjek's Note: Relax, this isn't a Calculus or Algebra Exam]
Link to quoted article (http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/exist.html)
"A friend in the Philosophy Department at the University of Kansas once said to me that numbers do not exist. They are just as fictional, he said, as the character Frodo in Lord of the Rings" thought out loud E. Lee Lady as she wrote on the possibility of the existence of "Mathematics" (the word is in quotes because we cannot yet say with a certain degree of fact that it even exists).
She later credits Kronecker in stating that "The natural numbers were created by God; all the others are the invention of humans" however adding on or rather subtracting :) that most contemporary mathematicians would agree that Kronecker was wrong only in his statement about natural numbers; they too are the creation of human minds. These are all very clever and interesting arguments being raised in the Philosophy Universe (as is the general expectation of Philosophy arguments to be just that, clever and devoid of physical argument points, a sort of verbal Tennis, I thought). So I began to dig deep into this paper and got a convincing argument that would add me as one more convert in the Mathematics-Denier Ranks. Delving deeper, it can be deduced from her paper that Mathematics is a figment of our imaginations or non existent but however unlike fictional characters like Frodo that are the Figment of a single individual or a group of individuals, numbers on the other hand are collective imaginary objects. A sort of collective or rather consensual fictional character of individuals everywhere, sort of like an imaginary friend that everyone can see or rather thinks that they can see but cant actually tangibly interact with them. That in turn begs the question, are numbers real because we all think they are or regardless of our collective consciousness, are they non existent because they are not really there. No matter the discourse it can be stated with a certain degree of confidence that something has to be either non existent or existent, it cannot be both.
[Sidenote by E.Lee Lady: If numbers are just mental inventions whose only existence is in our minds, then how come they are so useful in describing the tangible world?]
What if we delve deeper into the very origins of Mathematics. Lakoff G and Núñez R.E address this in their book "Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being". It is their "option" that number like spoken language, by virtue of their ability to be used in the real world are thus real not necessary in their being tangible but rather qualified by their ability to be used in describing tangible objects. So in summation by are saying that numbers essentially borrow their existence from the objects in which they are employed to describe; For example the 5 in the Bible story about 5 loaves and 2 fish is only made real by its ability to quantify the size of the collection of tangible objects, in this case fish, available in the said description. As for the origins of numbers in the collective consciousness, Lakeoff G and Núñez R.E describe numbers as stemming from the informative roots of our combined consciousness as a people. Developing, as they allude to, parallel to spoken language and as an argument on the existence of language in a normal conversation would be stamped out as a product of a bit to much to drink, as such the authors take the same approach in stamping out the argument on the existence of number and Mathematics as a whole of ludicracy.
Thus it can be said an unbiased :) observer that the Existence of Mathematics is purely based on who believes in it the MOST. One might ask the applicability of this post to the Steemit community but think, as a collective the ancients managed to create a collective consciousness that transcended millenia. As the Steemit community we must strive to Transcend and create something so real that its very NON-Existence can be subject to debate Centuries from now. That even the deny of the applicability of Steemit in everyday life should be stamped out and also attributed to a bit to much to drink. As even Virtual Cryptocurrency (STEEM) can be, as Numbers are, used to describe the tangible world in which we live in. THANK YOU FELLOW STEEMERS and keep on SUPPORTING MY WORK.