Mathematics as Hermeneutics

[elfs]

One of the more common themes among the mathematically inclined writers like Greg Egan and Ted Chiang is that of mathematics and hermeneutics: the notion that much of what we think of as advanced mathematics, the kinds of stuff done by people with Erdos numbers (if you know what that is, you're really a math geek), is just the bottom floor, and that the stuff we'll be interested in next is too complicated, too big, and just too damned hard for the human brain. Mathematics will become hermeneutics ("The study of the methodological principles of interpretation.") as we try to grasp exactly what it was our computers are telling us about the world, as the proofs for the various interesting parts of mathematics become more than can fit into a single human consciousness.

Now, it seems mathematicians have started to understand that that's what it may come down to. Many people are familiar with the quote: "The universe is not only queerer than we think, it's queerer than we can think." I would move the emphasis now: "The universe is not only queerer than we think, it's queerer than we can think." But not our descendents.

Steven Strogatz addresses the question of mathematics as hermeneutics in his essay, The End of Insight.

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

I was very amused to realize, a while back, that I have a finite Erdős number. I recorded it as 4 a while back in my journal, but I can only find a chain of length 5 looking just now. Having published only one paper, I found this quite amusing.