Mathematics brought form to the otherwise erratic motions of heavenly objects…
…and now in understanding the precision of human thought.
Mathematics prove the world and the universe we live in to be precise. We humans trust our calculations for mass and velocity so well, we put people in objects and blasted them towards a predictable soft-landing space on a hurling object 240,000 miles away (the moon). Mathematics teach and prove to us that the world and the stars above us are not just incalculable or random sets of complicated movements, but actually things we can predict, comprehend, and ultimately control.
The earliest principles of math probably developed as tools to understand the most primitive forms of commerce: arithmetic. If I traded a cow for two goats, a system of arithmetic had to be set in motion to understand the value of each asset. With the birth of land acquisition and private property, tools like geometry would be born as a means to measure the shape and dimension of surveyed land. Later, the enlightened thinkers would set out to understand the erratic and complicated motions of the heavenly bodies and planetary objects above us, this understanding would birth the mathematical principles of Calculus. Math has always been and will continue to always be a method to how we perceive the world and how we perceive our place in the world.
We believe another chapter is unfolding in the interplay between mathematics and how we understand our existence. Popular sciences like game theory, and social situation theory have all stated it as defining that human thought is not random, but a calculated and precise measure of the environment and circumstances around us. One of the most powerful proofs of this is the KeyWord Tracker Tool by Google, that actual tracks (and publishes) the quantity and quality of thoughts being searched upon from the 2 billion internet users daily. Apps like Pandora and Apple Genius are utilizing this power by undermining the syncopated rhythms of music, quantifying human thought and applying all that to an algorithm that can predict what new music you will be interested in. Our mathematics have gone beyond the understanding of objects in our universe and into understanding the precise and quantifiable thoughts in our heads.
The social power of the internet has allowed us the science, math and technology to embrace a whole new world of understanding others and ourselves. We think there has never been a greater time to exist, to be alive, and to ‘delve! build! mold!’ this new world we live in… that is the root of our passion, that is the root of why we love our work. At CommandMass, believe marketing and development should thoroughly explore this new chapter of understanding.
So you’ve actually brushed up against two competing philosophies of mathematics here. When you say: “Mathematics prove the world and the universe we live in to be precise” you’re coming close to the Platonic notion of mathematics, in which numbers, and other mathematical concepts exist in some sense as real truths, and our own mathematics simply connects with those truths and their power derives from the fact that they operate in a space that is fundamentally connected to the way the universe operates.
The flip-side to this view of mathematics, which you’re closer to when you say “Math has always been and will continue to always be a method to how we perceive the world and how we perceive our place in the world.” Is that math is simply a construct built on top of what we see, and mathematics is merely the most formal attempt to apply structure to what is a fundamentally unstructured world. In this view, math is seen as not existing in any sense more universal than the goats that it is counting.
Your combination of these two ideas is perfectly reasonable, since I think it’s futile to really debate which is correct, and for practical purposes better to remember that mathematics both connects us to and allows us to understand the universe, while in fact being totally a construct of human minds.
Euclid was certainly seeking universal truths in his explorations of geometry, but mathematicians were never quite at ease with his notion that parallel lines should NEVER interesect. It turns out that if you assume they do not, you have a geometry that is appropriate in small flat surfaces, and if you assume they must eventually, you have a geometry that is appropriate for things on the scale of the solar system or bigger. You could argue that the latter is inherently true, or you could argue that both are just good descriptions of the systems that they observe, and you’d probably be right either way.
Thank you for this Isaac! So excited, and thanks for taking the time… ok, give me some time to sift through this and get back at you! xxop