A Brief Study into Continued Acts a Ghastly Violence Aimed at Mathematicians (Compiled At 2:42 AM)

Okay...here it goes.. this might be a little deviation from my painstakingly poetic (or as some would claim, doggerelly) posts that I am wont to post here. I was having this discussion with my friend about a certain something that somehow triggered a certain something else, which led to a certain seemingly random firing of a random sample of my neurons, that eventually landed me up thinking, that all hypotheses in order to make sense need a framework.



Here. let me put things in perspective. We complain all the time about the (in my opinion) the great service to mankind that mathematicians do as the defining act of their occupation . Not claiming to give us a perspective of reality. Let me see if this comes out right. All of human learning seems to be a description of what we perceive "reality" around us to be. Thats a sticky proposition indeed if you look at that statement alone, because all we are doing is trying to put reality down in terms of a description, which isnt really reality, its just the descriptions. But mathematicians arent pretentious. They make no claim whatsoever to be describing our tremendously intricate universe. They just play god. They make their own little universes, and play with them.



Now the basic aim of mathematics is to make those little universes and hypothesize about those little universes. So why is it that we laugh at them? well, apparently because, they dont try and talk about reality, or in other words ,they have to make their own framework to hold their hypotheses.Apparently, other , more socially useful beings dont, because they claim to be studying reality, whereas the mathematician says , what the heck, why study what god did when you can be god yourself!!!


Well but let us for a moment take our critical gaze off our Mathematically minded fellow human beings, and cast the same on ourselves, The supposedly "Normal " people, capable of making statements about "Reality", and hence needing no logical framework to hold it up, because hey, what the heck, its out there for all to see. Let us take up an example. Say for example, lets State a Hypothesis, which I have found to be statistically true , starting with me, and therefore I deem it to be a fact "Out There", an Integral part of reality.
"Bloggers who blog on non factual topics hate to read on topics they have been thinking of blogging on" .
Now I have observed this. Its a part of reality, that every self respecting blogger who has seen a painting and is thinking of writing a blog on it would hate to read a 200 page hard bound volume on that painting. But I bet that if I let this Hypothesis stand as it is, it can be torn into shreds by any semi-competent logician. Why I myself can think of a few logical arguments countering it, and I am not even that good.


What this "Hypothesis-about-reality-made-by-a-Non-Mathofreak" needs to stand up is a Rulebook defining what the scope of logic is in its case.It needs some less contentious facts from the same perception of reality to fall back on. For example, I can say, as the first rule of this universe , that
"Writing is a two phase process 1) formulation and 2) writing" .
Then maybe I can put in a parallel rule in addition
"Non commercial writing is usually less about content, and more about satisfaction"
Then in order to make this framework watertight for the hypothesis to sit in, I'd have to put in two subrules, first
"Satisfaction in case mentioned above results from writing what the writer has formulated in his own way"
and finally
"Aforementioned act of Individuality is hindered by reading other expositions on the same topic"


Now with these four rules, Our Hypothesis doesnt sound so contentious, and until you are super cynic, you wont put up a huge fight against my framework. So a statement of reality, supplied with a framework , actually starts looking quite realistic. But what was it without a framework? A paper house with a Big Bad Wolf at the door, with three shivering little piglets inside. And the framework, why, they were strict! No Maybe's ,No proably's, they are rules, but they were acceptable, and more importantly they made a seemingly unpalatable hypothesis about what I deem reality quite acceptable. So next time you smirk at a mathematician, stop dead in your tracks. You are no better.


And no, thanks for asking, but I am not a mathematician, I am a physicist :D