(January 5, 2016 at 10:05 am)ChadWooters Wrote: Sure mathematics has epistemological value as the means by which we know. That has no bearing on the ontological status of the mathematical objects about which we know. Care to opine on that question, FNM?
Well, that's a question that is well beyond what little expertise I have, but I do lean towards mathematics being a fundamental property of nature as opposed to simply being a human construct. That's a really difficult question to answer, though, and there appears to be no consensus. Anything I have to say on the matter is pure speculation.
Where I take umbrage, however, is when the supernatural is applied to math. There's no need to apply magical explanations to something when nature appears to be perfectly capable of being responsible.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
