#unreasonableeffectiveness — Public Fediverse posts

@RefurioAnachro You are right that some responses to Wigner seem to have gone further than his original argument.

I think that such responses may have been at least *partly* due to the use of mathematical aesthetic judgement as one way of evaluating fundamental physical theories that go beyond what can currently be empirically tested.

People before Wigner had drawn attention to the uncanny way in which ever-more-abstract mathematics found applications in physics (e.g. Einstein in a 1921 lecture on ‘Geometry and Experience’, Whitehead in his 1925 book ‘Science and the Modern World’). But, although it was perhaps only incidental to his argument, Wigner seems to have been the first person to draw attention to the mystery that mathematics pursued for at least partly *aesthetic* reasons turned out to be useful in physics, and several of the people who responded to him used aesthetic arguments.

Shameless advertisement: for more on this, see chs 24+25 of my #OpenAccess book ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’ [https://archive.org/details/cain_formandnumber_ebook_large] :-)

#Wigner #UnreasonableEffectiveness #PhilSci

@RefurioAnachro You are right that some responses to Wigner seem to have gone further than his original argument.

I think that such responses may have been at least *partly* due to the use of mathematical aesthetic judgement as one way of evaluating fundamental physical theories that go beyond what can currently be empirically tested.

People before Wigner had drawn attention to the uncanny way in which ever-more-abstract mathematics found applications in physics (e.g. Einstein in a 1921 lecture on ‘Geometry and Experience’, Whitehead in his 1925 book ‘Science and the Modern World’). But, although it was perhaps only incidental to his argument, Wigner seems to have been the first person to draw attention to the mystery that mathematics pursued for at least partly *aesthetic* reasons turned out to be useful in physics, and several of the people who responded to him used aesthetic arguments.

Shameless advertisement: for more on this, see chs 24+25 of my #OpenAccess book ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’ [https://archive.org/details/cain_formandnumber_ebook_large] :-)

#Wigner #UnreasonableEffectiveness #PhilSci

@RefurioAnachro You are right that some responses to Wigner seem to have gone further than his original argument.

I think that such responses may have been at least *partly* due to the use of mathematical aesthetic judgement as one way of evaluating fundamental physical theories that go beyond what can currently be empirically tested.

People before Wigner had drawn attention to the uncanny way in which ever-more-abstract mathematics found applications in physics (e.g. Einstein in a 1921 lecture on ‘Geometry and Experience’, Whitehead in his 1925 book ‘Science and the Modern World’). But, although it was perhaps only incidental to his argument, Wigner seems to have been the first person to draw attention to the mystery that mathematics pursued for at least partly *aesthetic* reasons turned out to be useful in physics, and several of the people who responded to him used aesthetic arguments.

Shameless advertisement: for more on this, see chs 24+25 of my #OpenAccess book ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’ [https://archive.org/details/cain_formandnumber_ebook_large] :-)

#Wigner #UnreasonableEffectiveness #PhilSci

@RefurioAnachro You are right that some responses to Wigner seem to have gone further than his original argument.

I think that such responses may have been at least *partly* due to the use of mathematical aesthetic judgement as one way of evaluating fundamental physical theories that go beyond what can currently be empirically tested.

People before Wigner had drawn attention to the uncanny way in which ever-more-abstract mathematics found applications in physics (e.g. Einstein in a 1921 lecture on ‘Geometry and Experience’, Whitehead in his 1925 book ‘Science and the Modern World’). But, although it was perhaps only incidental to his argument, Wigner seems to have been the first person to draw attention to the mystery that mathematics pursued for at least partly *aesthetic* reasons turned out to be useful in physics, and several of the people who responded to him used aesthetic arguments.

Shameless advertisement: for more on this, see chs 24+25 of my #OpenAccess book ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’ [https://archive.org/details/cain_formandnumber_ebook_large] :-)

#Wigner #UnreasonableEffectiveness #PhilSci

@RefurioAnachro You are right that some responses to Wigner seem to have gone further than his original argument.

I think that such responses may have been at least *partly* due to the use of mathematical aesthetic judgement as one way of evaluating fundamental physical theories that go beyond what can currently be empirically tested.

People before Wigner had drawn attention to the uncanny way in which ever-more-abstract mathematics found applications in physics (e.g. Einstein in a 1921 lecture on ‘Geometry and Experience’, Whitehead in his 1925 book ‘Science and the Modern World’). But, although it was perhaps only incidental to his argument, Wigner seems to have been the first person to draw attention to the mystery that mathematics pursued for at least partly *aesthetic* reasons turned out to be useful in physics, and several of the people who responded to him used aesthetic arguments.

Shameless advertisement: for more on this, see chs 24+25 of my #OpenAccess book ‘Form & Number: A History of Mathematical Beauty’ [https://archive.org/details/cain_formandnumber_ebook_large] :-)

#Wigner #UnreasonableEffectiveness #PhilSci

🥱 "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Fourier Transform" – where we dive into the thrilling realm of slide PDFs and expired patents. 🎉 Spoiler alert: it's just as riveting as it sounds! 📈🔧
https://joshuawise.com/resources/ofdm/ #UnreasonableEffectiveness #FourierTransform #SlidePDFs #ExpiredPatents #DataScience #HackerNews #ngated

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Fourier Transform

https://joshuawise.com/resources/ofdm/

#HackerNews #UnreasonableEffectiveness #FourierTransform #SignalProcessing #Mathematics #Technology