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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (24290)	7/2/2006 1:44:16 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 28931

Well, numbers are just ideas. It is our way of differentiating between some and more. They have no actual existence outside the realm of ideas. We form ideas of half or one more and so forth. We represent these ideas with a language called mathematics. As Einstein said: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one". Gem is approaching ideas from a Platonist perspective. There are of course other languages for describing amounts, proportions, and relationships. We don't need to use base 10 nor the decimal system. The trouble with many mathematicians is that they have come to invest language with an ultimacy it does not possess. The world of mathematics is a world of ideas wherein one sorts and manipulates data. If we had entirely different senses we would make sense of our world in entirely different ways. Having the eyes of a dragonfly and the nose of a dog while yet capable of concept formation....there is no telling what sort of mathematical language we might use to sort and order our experiences. Perhaps we could invent a number system based on odors... Again, if our sensitivity was such that we could easily experience millions of gradations from smooth to rough or soft to hard..this would be a possible mechanism for counting. Or perhaps if our eyes could clearly discern thousands of hues and tints of color... Our method is completely abstract. One seed is called ONE. Two seeds are called TWO. Twelve seeds are called a DOZEN and so on. The word two itself is just a sound I can make. But when I hear it I think of less than three seeds and more than one seed. It is not because two itself always existed. Indeed, if religionists are correct, then in the beginning there was only one, therefore two must be an idea that came later and did not always exist. It is very certain that dolphins understand some mathematics. There is some and there is more and there is less and there is too far or too close and so forth. What language do they use to communicate such information or to respond to their environment? I don't know, but their neural area for acoustical imaging is about 10 times that of the human brain (Wikpedia). If they could develop advanced language they would quickly evolve to higher awareness just as human evolvement is linked to language.