[lbo-talk] Re: Scientistism

[Etienne]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:58:20 -0700 (PDT), "andie nachgeborenen"
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> said:
> Nonetheless, the language of nature is mathematics,
> and while you can get it in translation, you lose a
> lot, just as the very best translations of Homer
> aren't the same as reading it in Greek, or the very
> best explanations of sculpture or painting leave out
> the crucial visual experience. If that's arrogant,
> well, to paraphrase Che's remark that "it's not _my_
> fault that the world is Marxist," it's not my _my_
> fault that God wrote the world in the language of
> numbers.

It seems a bit innaccurate to characterize the sort of maths thats
involved in modern science, particularly physics, as "the language of
numbers," though, and maybe that's part of what's causing people to
reject the centrality of maths to science. For example, Joanna wrote
that:

"the numbers are only a beginning (or sometimes a diversion) as they
always have to be interpreted because when you run an experiment, you
get all kinds of numbers, some of them you include in your data; some
you don't."

But measurement and experiment (although doubtless essential to the
practice of science) are not really where maths becomes essential to
understanding science. Rather, maths is the vocabulary which scientists
use to describe the objects they study; particularly in physics, there
simply is no other vocabulary available. Doubtless you could make one
up, and you could even use "everyday" words in your new vocabulary, but
you would just be finding a new way to express the maths, it seems to
me.
-- 

     "The bourgeois want art voluptuous and life ascetic; the

      reverse would be better."

                                                          -- Adorno
Tim                                             http://www.huh.34sp.com/