So...guess I'm the new guy

[discordianpope]

when you take two chestnuts and describe them as two chestnuts you have already started doing the math though. You have identified a set - a mathematical object - and assigned a cardinality to the set. I think, my maths knowledge in't too good. In the very act of carving up reality into these sets of one things, two things, and tens of things, you are already doing the math though. And then when you add these sets together to get bigger sets of things (like chestnuts) you are doing more maths, whether you use numbers to describe the process or not. All this doesn't mean that science can't confirm mathematics though. Just because we didn't begin with an empirical basis for mathematics doesn't mean we can't use the success of science to say "Gee, I guess those mathematical intuitions must have been right, cos all this physics is basically mathematics and it seems to work pretty well!" That's where Vinny is wrong. I actually, I think he is right about mathematics not being empirically testable, but I wouldn't say that it's all just assumed either.