The Scientist
Volume 24 | Issue 8 | Page 28
Date: 2010-08-01
By David Berreby
The Limits of Understanding
Mathematics is no match for evolution or consciousness. Is that a temporary problem?
Do mysteries and gaps in scientific knowledge arise from things we don’t know yet? Or from things we won’t know, ever? Human ignorance might be just a matter of accident and circumstance. Perhaps science is like a passenger waiting for a bus with no schedule handy—she doesn’t happen to know when the next one will arrive, but with enough time and effort, she certainly will.
In the 20th century, though, more than a few scientists concluded that there is no cosmic bus schedule—that, in fact, some things are fundamentally unknowable. For example, as physicist Mario Livio put it during a panel discussion on “the limits of human understanding” last month at the World Science Festival in New York, no amount of computing power could predict the speed and position of every atom in the atmosphere “because quantum physics teaches us that we cannot know position and speed at the same time. It’s not our computers. It’s the world.”
If phenomena like quantum physics, evolution, consciousness, and complexity can’t be represented by mathematical models, perhaps it’s because we’re not like the passenger. We may be more like a bus mechanic who has no manual: building on what works for us at the moment.
For centuries, for instance, scientists have rightly revered “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,” in Eugene Wigner’s famous phrase. But, panelists said, mathematics hasn’t been able to describe evolution or consciousness, and some wonder if it ever will. The “unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics” is, Livio pointed, also a catchphrase, which has been applied to biology, economics, and cognitive science.
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COMENTÁRIO CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
A matemática não é páreo para a evolução porque ela é mais inteligente do que vocês matemáticos idiotas! Quem foi que disse algo mais ou menos assim? Se a memória não me falha, parece que foi Leslie Orgel, mas alguém me corrija se estiver enganado.
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