A widespread and persistent fallacy that continues to be
propagated, especially by Christian mathematicians, is the erroneous belief that
Mathematics is a Language.
This faulty notion has a long history, but came especially to the fore
with Galileo’s famous statement:-
“The
universe cannot be read until we have learnt the
language
and become familiar with the characters in
which it is written.
It is written
in mathematical language,
and the
letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to
comprehend
a single word.”
Galileo Galilei; (1564-1642);
Opere Il Saggiatore
Ignoring the fact that there is NOTHING in the universe which can be
“read”— because there are NO written words, numbers or geometric
figures in nature— Galileo and his modern day disciples are unaware that
man-made mathematical descriptions of how we believe reality operates
are always erroneous because Induction is always a Logical Fallacy.
In addition, mathematics is a feeble tool with which to try and model a
creation that is
unimaginably complex. To believe that a mathematical
model of a natural process has captured the essence of that process
betrays a profound ignorance of the nature of reality and the limits of
man’s abilities to understand the intricacies of the cosmos.
Ascribing mathematics to God is a serious offense. Mathematics
contains no truth and is in fact an
inconsistent
human invention because it is based upon axioms which cannot in any way
be true or faithful to the fallen and cursed cosmos in which we reside.
To mistake mathematics for
a language is to betray a deep ignorance of the nature of numbers and of
the nature of language.
Elsewhere on this website the reader can find several pages on the
Nature of Numbers and the Nature of Science.
On this page we must
address the specious notion that Mathematics is a Language.
A language is a very complex method of communication that combines words
to evoke ideas in our minds. Numbers on their own do not have that
property.
A language is constructed of many components or parts of speech such as
verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions,
and interjections. Not only does a language require these, but a
sentence is a very complex and flexible combination of articles,
subjects, direct and indirect objects, modifiers, predicates and other
elements without which it is impossible to express meaningful and
complex thoughts.
Mathematics does NOT comprise of a single one of these parts of speech.
Many men throughout history have tried to
link numbers with ideas and words. The most well known is what is
commonly called Bible Numerics.
There, Biblical words and phrases are converted into numbers using
predetermined numeric values for letters of the alphabet, in the hope
that the conversion will lead to better insight into the Scriptures.
This fallacious reasoning has been clearly refuted on
this page.
Exactly in parallel with Bible
Numerics, the attempt to describe nature with numbers is nothing but Nature Numerics.
Just as
converting Bible words into numbers does not add to nor does it improve the verbal
Revelation, mathematics cannot be expected to reveal any truth about
reality because it is not connected in any way with creation.
The
representation of our experiences in mathematical form is an
over-simplification of the intricacies that are present in even the most
elementary particle or simplest motion of matter. To portray
mathematics as an adequate and efficient “language” with which to
describe reality is misleading and deceptive.
The fallacy of
Bible Numerics should not be confused with Kurt Gödel’s method of
ascribing numeric values to words and sentences, by which method he
showed that mathematics cannot be relied upon as a source of truth or
even consistency. In other words, he
showed that it was not possible for mathematics to prove itself to be an
autonomous source of truth.
We see that Galileo’s evaluation of nature and the uses of mathematics
as a way to acquire truth about nature was a monumental error.
One way to
evaluate whether mathematics is a language is to ask the question:
“Can one discuss the nature of mathematics using
only numbers?”
Or, to put it another way, if mathematics was the only “language” in
existence, could we communicate ideas, concepts and meanings using only
numbers and geometric shapes?
The obvious answer is NO.
A set of numbers following upon each other (21 378 1606 53
…) or a
collection of geometric shapes is of no use in inducing ideas that help
mankind to interact with each other in important matters. No numbers
could possibly carry vital meanings such as Love, Justice, Compassion or
Truth.
As shown elsewhere on this website, the use of mathematics to try and
describe how we perceive the way nature behaves is best described as
Nature Numerics.
In contrast, a genuine language such as
English, is
necessary and
sufficient to
have meaningful discourse between two or more minds, or when a single
person contemplates ideas in his own mind. We do not think using
numbers, we think using words.
This does not mean that mathematics is
useless. In fact it is an indispensible tool for counting and measuring.
Tools by nature have a limited
range of use. Hammers and drills are tools, but we would not call a
boxful of mechanic’s tools a
language.
It does a grave disservice to natural language to equate it with the tools
of the mathematician, and it raises unjustified and unfulfillable
expectations of numbers.
Every word in a language has a meaning
that the mind recalls every time the word is heard or read. This cannot
be said of numbers, because numbers have NO meaning at all on their own
because the words that we use in math, such as One, Two, Three, etc.
refer to ideas that are abstract and imaginary and that do not exist
anywhere in creation.
We delude ourselves when we impute the
properties of language to numbers. Then when we ascribe these
meaningless, empty and impotent figures to God, we do irreparable damage
to the cause of Christ and to His Verbal Revelation.
In sum, neither mathematics nor formal logic is a source of analytic
truths, and I do not know where else one would look for them. The reasons why
mathematics and formal logic have seemed plausible sources of analytic truths
is that they have seemed to be technical contexts in which there might be point
to the assertion of necessary truths. But this view presupposes that
mathematics and formal logic can, as systems, be looked at as languages
different from ordinary language, with peculiarities of their own.
They are not languages, however. The rôle which they play is
different from that of any language.
D. W. Hamlyn; Analytic
Truths; Mind; v65; n259; 1956; p366-67
