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Math : Art or Science?

 This is part 1 of a new series called Math : Art or Science ?

People who have known me for the last few years, especially between 2015 to 2018, have heard me ranting about the purity of Math and Platonism at every given opportunity. And yeah, at times I have been like a fanatic and wanted to defend Platonism at any cost. 

I think I have grown a lot in the last 1 year. My understanding of Platonism and my idea about the purity of Math has evolved and become more mature. So now would be a good time to actually address the issue - Math : Is it Science or Art?

The difficulty in answering this question is the lack of a definition of Art. It is difficult to quantify art and what was not even present once can become a very mainstream form of art as we as humans grow (for  example, music enthusiasts will know of a newly emerging genre of music called Post-Rock).

So we are going to take the other route. We are going to try to, if not define, then at least characterize Science and see if Math does the same or not! 


Albert Einstein

Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and any other famous scientist that you can name, all had one crucial similarity. They were trying to understand nature. "What is nature?" I hear you asking.

Nature is what can be observed using our physical senses along with some rules of inference that we have adapted in our thinking process over the years. So whatever we can see, literally see using our eyes or using technology that we have built to expand our sight falls under nature. Whatever we can hear, touch, smell, taste falls under nature. Whatever we can observe as a change in a measurable physical quantity falls under nature, example change in atmospheric pressure, change in atoms during a chemical reaction, change in a living being during its life span - all these fall under nature. 

The imaginative reader will naturally ask questions like "How about whatever we can feel? Is that nature?" We will address these questions later on.

But for the time being we accept that we have a fair understanding of what nature means and science is a pursuit of understanding, observing and explaining nature. 

Does Math understand, observe and explain nature? Sure it does! It is the language in which we explain our observations. From physical laws to chemical reactions to evolutionary models in Biology to planetary motions in Astronomy to Machine Learning  to estimating what fraction of the population is prone to heal after applying a certain medicine when they have a certain disease to engineering the construction of a bridge - Everything in nature that we can explain, we can explain using Mathematics. [Nowhere has it been suggested in my post that Math can explain everything. It is being said that whatever we can explain, we can explain through Math.] 

So clearly Math is Science right?
Well yes, but actually no!

Stay tuned for my next post where I contradict everything I just said and try to defend the outrageous and bold statement - Math is NOT Science.

See ya!

PS - Here's a link to one of my favourite Post Rock songs. 

Thank You Space Expert.

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