(September 14, 2018 at 9:27 am)polymath257 Wrote:(September 14, 2018 at 8:58 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: Or do we count in Spanish... you seem to be hung up on language again.
Ahh...but my examples are NOT just different languages. They are different fundamentally and are *all* definitions of the *number* 4 in different contexts.
I am hung up on language because mathematics *is* a language. And the number 4 is word in that language. It doesn't have an independent existence: it is a language construct. And, in math, different aspects of the language have wildly different *definitions* of the *number* 4.
Using a language construct doesn't mean that what you are describing is subjective in it's nature. We use language to convey things. Perhaps sometimes that language is not a precise as we would like, or a word can have multiple meanings which we have to discern. I'm not talking about the language (and I don't think the others are either).
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. - Alexander Vilenkin
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther