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God created the real numbers

(www.ethanheilman.com)
31 points EthanHeilman | 2 comments | 28 Aug 25 14:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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tshaddox ◴[28 Aug 25 18:05 UTC] No.45055139[source]▶
Isn't this article conflating our formalism of a given abstract entity (like real numbers or integers) with the abstract entity itself? Surely quantities existed long before humans (e.g. there was a quantity of stars in the Milky Way 1 million years ago). And surely ordinals existed long before humans (e.g. there was a most massive star in the Milky Way 1 million years ago).

The article's claim seems to be about the mathematical formalisms humans have invented for integers and real numbers. And I agree that our formalism of integers is simpler and more elegant than our formalism of real numbers. But that could just be because we've done a worse job formalizing real numbers!

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1. lotharcable ◴[28 Aug 25 20:16 UTC] No.45056573[source]▶
Modern science is derived from Christian Scholasticism from the middle ages so this way of talking and thinking about science as being divinely originated is only unusual in the past couple centuries or so.

It is from that era that they developed systems of rigorous debate, formal logic, and things like peered reviewed papers that we call "the scientific method".

As far as the history of these sorts of mathematical discussions the concept of negative numbers didn't exist until the 15 century. I am sure that each new concept was faced with some resistance and debate on its true nature before it became widely accepted.

So I am sure that somebody looking through the historical record could find all sorts of wild quotes from different theologians trying to grasp new concepts and reconcile them with existing mathmatical standards.

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2. griffzhowl ◴[29 Aug 25 20:07 UTC] No.45068795[source]▶
> Modern science is derived from Christian Scholasticism from the middle ages

No, I don't think so. It seems much more based on ancient Greek geometry and logic, the Indian numeral system and Arabic algebra. Modern science really took off after Galileo, at the time when the ancient Greek works were recovered in Europe and could be synthesized with the arithmetic and algebra of these other cultures. Galileo himself credits the "divus" Archimedes as his main inspiration.

What aspects of Christian scholasticism do you think developed into modern science?