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Is mathematics mostly chaos or mostly order?

(www.quantamagazine.org)
116 points baruchel | 1 comments | 20 Jun 25 15:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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dgfitz ◴[24 Jun 25 06:04 UTC] No.44363259[source]▶
I’ve always considered math is something that is discovered, neither chaotic or orderly, it just… is. Really brilliant people make new discoveries, but they were there the whole time waiting to be found.

This article seems to kind of dance around yet agree with the discovery thing, but in an indirect way.

Math is just math. Music is just music. Even seemingly-random musical notes played in a “song” has a rational explanation relative to the instrument. It isn’t the fault of music that a song might sound chaotic, it’s just music. Bad music maybe. This analogy can break down quickly, but in my head it makes sense.

Disclaimer - the most advanced math classes I’ve taken: calc3/linear/diffeq.

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leftcenterright ◴[24 Jun 25 10:47 UTC] No.44364735[source]▶
What makes you consider it a "discovery" instead of a creation of us humans?

I am more on the side of seeing maths as a precision language we utilize and extend as needed, especially because it can describe physically non-existent things e.g. perfect circles.

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1. frontfor ◴[24 Jun 25 11:58 UTC] No.44365200[source]▶
I like to think of axioms as "created" while the consequences (i.e. theorems) of said axioms are "discovered". You can't create logic consequences (conclusions) given a set of axioms, but you can certainly create the axioms (premises).