Towards a new mathematics for science
I've recently drafted a paper with the title "Towards a new mathematics for science" which argues, with a subsidiary paper, that there are weaknesses in today's mathematics as it is applied in science, and that those shortcomings may be overcome in a new mathematics for science (more below).
The two papers may be downloaded via these links:
* Towards a new mathematics for science (PDF, bit.ly/2o1pr8p). This is the main paper.
* On the "mysterious" effectiveness of mathematics in science (PDF, bit.ly/2otrHD0). This is the subsidiary paper.
Ideas in the paper relate to Chapter 12 in Carlo Rovelli's excellent book Reality Is Not What It Seems, especially "Many scientists suspect today that the concept of 'information' may turn out to be a key for new advances in physics."
Here's a bit more about what's in the two papers:
To cut short a lot of evidence and argument:
* Much of human learning, perception and thinking may be understood as compression of information.
* Science may be seen to be, at root, a search for compression of information about the world.
* Mathematics may be seen to be a set of techniques for compression of information, and their application.
* The SP theory of intelligence (and its realisation in the SP computer model) has compression of information at its core.
The proposed new mathematics for science would be an amalgamation of mathematics of today with the SP system. There would be two main benefits:
* It would expand the scope of mathematics with new ways of representing and processing knowledge.
* It would introduce a new discipline into mathematics: quantitative evaluation of calculations in terms of information compression. This may help to guard against unfalsifiable theories and spurious applications of mathematics.
* In several sections, I've discussed possible implications of the new thinking in, for example: the goal of unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity; new interpretations of concepts in quantum mechanics including superposition, nonlocality, and entanglement; a new interpretation of some of the two-slits experiments; and potential advantages of the proposed new mathematics for science in the realm of statistics.
A theme in these proposals is that: 1) Science is the product of the human intellect so it should not be surprising that features of human learning, perception and thinking should have an influence on scientific theories. 2) In much of science those kinds of influence may be ignored. But 3) in physics, and quantum mechanics in particular, it seems that aspects of human cognition can be important.
Comments or suggestions will be very welcome.
Gerry Wolff