Does Physics Come Before Mathematics? | Vlatko Vedral

*Vlatko Vedral discusses whether mathematics or physics is more fundamental, whether reality has ultimate building blocks, and why quantum information may provide a deeper way of understanding the universe.* Do you think mathematics underlies reality, or does reality come first and mathematics describe it?

Can Math exist without Physics? Can Physics exist without Math? Do they not co-exist from the beginning?

Interesting topic, Aristotle engaged in physics without math, in reviewing Democritus' ideas he actually touched on some atomic theory. Modern speculation is fleshed-out with instrumentation, detection, math, and empirical measure. If the math and empirical measurement don't fit then a formerly coherent/speculative paradigm is cast out . . . like the Ptolemaic geocentric universe. Speculation precedes what we think we're measuring or calculating. Math alone can lead to problems like alleged "dark matter/energy" where the math didn't work out so instead of rigorous rethinking a correction-constant (dark matter/energy) was sloppily tacked on like jamming a jigsaw puzzle piece in that does not fit. Yet sometimes the math can precede the model of the cause, as with gravity. We calculate an effect, make it predictable yet don't even know what it is fundamentally. There's also a question of pure math versus empirical measurement (applied) math, but ultimately physics starts as Aristotle and the natural philosophers before him started, observation, speculation, and logic and that's combined with math and the scientific method. Numbers and equations alone do not describe the nature of the phenomena without some visualized medium or mechanical/quantum agency, math follows the lead of curiosity and speculation, although the latter two can follow the results of new experiments too. There is no math necessary for say, the double-slit experiment; the scientific community interprets/chooses a meaning/explanation. One last point, standardized human languages precedes both philosophy and math. "Gravity" measured or speculated is a word with (ambiguous) meaning, first Newton noticed that things "fall" and that a big enough trajectory would be an orbit. Then came the math.

Math is King

Math is a priori

Thanks!

This just goes to show how divided physicists are. There is no unified approach or certainties on the big questions, to thereby form philosophy off

Surely the laws of physics come first, and maths is the way we have learned how to describe, explain or predict their behaviour? Great conversation!

Philosophical enquiry comes first, even though the physical entities existed from time immemorial without being cognised. When the enquiry applied algebraic representations on values unknown mathematics had its humble beginnings. The probabilities for all occur at same time to the earliest interested observer in whatever form it was.

Very good