An extreme Platonist manifesto which reached me via Samizdat: Max Tegmark (MIT), Shut up and calculate, arXiv:0709.4024v1 [physics.pop-ph] 25 Sep 2007. One quote:
I argue that our universe is not just described by mathematics — it is mathematics.
Posted by: Alexandre Borovik | April 12, 2008
Shut up and calculate
Posted in Uncategorized
Thanks for posting, Sasha. I took a look at all the papers that the first of the links in your note points to and found the joined paper with with Wheeler, called 100 Years of the Quantum, the most enjoyable of the bunch.
By: misha on April 14, 2008
at 4:21 am
And, speaking of Wheeler…
By: misha on April 16, 2008
at 6:42 am
[...] written before about Max Tegmark’s proposition that the universe is mathematics. I just saw it highlighted [...]
By: Universe is academic at Freedom of Science on April 16, 2008
at 11:50 am
I particulary enjoyed the title of this post! (Not because I have been told to do so on occasions…)
By: Beans on April 18, 2008
at 2:38 pm
Yet another interpretation of “shut up and calculate,” meaninig “use numerical analysis and computers,” from Body and Soul: Applied Mathematics Education Reform Project,
“Dreams of Calculus” and a preliminary version of “Computational Turbulent Incompressible Flow” (feturing an old photo of Kolmogorov on page 55) are downloadable. Enjoy
By: misha on April 19, 2008
at 2:44 am
When I first read Tegmark’s ideas in Scientific American five years ago, I was awestruck. Here is a respected physicist, having his ideas published in leading journals (Annals of Physics, 1998), feted in Scientific American, and offered choice appointment to MIT. In contrast, for proposing a very closely-related idea — that ideas and concepts inhabit some inaccessible but really-existing realm — the biologist Rupert Sheldrake has been ridiculed and snubbed by the scientific establishment. The journal “Nature” even argued that Sheldrake’s book should burnt. Yet Sheldrake, unlike Tegmark (as far as I am aware), has actually proposed and conducted scientific experiments to test his hypothesis (of morphic resonance). Why are these proposals acceptable in physics now when they were rejected in biology two decades ago? Does this say something about the open-mindedness of the two disciplines?
By: Peter on April 30, 2008
at 10:48 am