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Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented?
An anonymous reader points out an article up at Science News on a question that, remarkably, is still being debated after a few thousand years: is mathematics discovered, or is it invented? Those who answer "discovered" are the intellectual descendants of Plato; their number includes Roger Penrose. The article notes that one difficulty with the Platonic view: if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state. The European Mathematical Society recently devoted space to the debate. One of the papers, Let Platonism die, can be found on page 24 of this PDF. The author believes that Platonism "has more in common with mystical religions than with modern science."
No you are just being an ass, and it is not merely impolite, it is downright rude and arrogant. If c^2 is just a constant then why is the exponent involved exactly 2? Also c^2 is NOT a constant, c is the constant, dickhead. Sorry for being so rude (altho I'm not really) but people like you make /. look like a bunch of undereducated retards.
The fact that the power in E=mc^2 and other equations is something that has perplexed scientists for decades at least. It's like my electromagnetism lecturer pointed out, we go through pages of turgid mathematics only to end up with these elegantly simple equations...
Yes, but it's squared, and not squared plus a bit. Squared gives you the right answer, but it's a very neat and elegant answer. Also, for stuff like magnetic fields and such, you have inverse squares. Perfect inverse squares. Someone further down made a joke about intelligent design, but when faced with stuff like this, I think people are just retarded to not even consider the possibility.
which is totally what she said