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Mathematics and Physics
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  • Mathematics is a set of models that describe numbers and physical systems. Mostly mathematics describes what we think numbers and physical systems do - we are often wrong, especially when the models and mathematics are taken out of context.

    There are no "laws of physics" only models of reality, usually expressed in mathematical terms.

    When people talk about the "rules of mathematics", I beieve that they have the logic the wrong way round. Mathematics describes reality, it does not comprise a set of rules by which reality is governed.

    Reality does what reality does. We try and understand them by making models of them. These models sometime include what we call laws. Nature doesn't understand laws.

    Bernard Robertson-Dunn
    6 April 2011

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