Why does 2+2=4? What math teaches us about deep reality(nationalreview.com)
nationalreview.com
Why does 2+2=4? What math teaches us about deep reality
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-does-2-2-4-what-math-teaches-us-about-deep-reality/
3 comments
Just yesterday I was thinking about it. Who will decide we are not using circular reasonings for these seemingly nonsensical things (to my non math loving brain).
I read a proof of why 2 is greater than 1 and I have forgotten about it but I just don't like such things. Why are we proving definitions and who will keep out the circular reasonings when math is being built from the ground up. I view math ppl with lot of suspicion because they have intuition and they don't explain but who would say that their collective intuition is wrong (if it is). That's tyrannical for the non math people
At the core, we've decided how math should work because it solves practical problems. Two is larger than one because if I have two oranges, I have more than if I had one.
We could have decided on things working entirely differently, and there are people who explore those topics[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms#Nonstandard_model...
We could have decided on things working entirely differently, and there are people who explore those topics[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms#Nonstandard_model...