I saw a video yesterday of Neil DeGrass Tyson where he said maths is the universal language as it explains everything. He then acknowledged that we came up with the idea of maths and it was incredible. I don’t understand how it explains anything, surely it just explains our understanding of things and is therefore our own bias? If an alien landed and we showed it some algebra would it understand it? I’m genuinely curious and confused about this (I have dyscalculia, autism and ADHD).
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Because “symbol for 2” multiplied by “symbol for 2” comes out to “symbol for 4”, regardless of whether youre using Arabic, chinese or alien symbols
An alien wouldn’t have the same notation for math and physics but they would have their own describing the same laws.
The fundamental concepts behind maths are universal in the sense that unlike something like, say, the biological makeup of a certain animal, which would depend strongly on that animal, and would therefore only be present in that specific animal and nowhere else in the universe, mathematical concepts are true everywhere. I’m not sure how much maths you know, but even a basic concept like addition, the concept of addition, what it really means to add two things together, is valid even to aliens. Aliens will know of the concept of ‘two aliens’. Similar to how animals can understand the concept of numbers as well. However, an animal doesn’t necessarily understand the concept of love, or money, or economic systems, and they don’t understand English. Those aren’t universal concepts like in maths. There are loads of important mathematical concepts like this, and they’re all independent of any actual physical aspects of life; they’re almost purely conceptual, so they’re not tied to anything physical, so they’re universal. That’s my ELI5 attempt
Tyson is a math person…so of course it explains everything from his perspective. One could say “love” is the universal language. Get a math person to explain the concept of love using their set of tools.
Biology is applied chemistry
Chemistry is applied physics
Physics is applied maths
Ergo, everything comes down to maths
What they mean is that there is an underlying truth to mathematics that is separate to what humans have created.
If we showed an alien a maths textbook they wouldn’t understand it because they would have no idea that we had decided to represent addition with the + symbol or represent six with the 6 symbol for example. Those things are made up by humans and are just our way of writing something down.
However, no matter what planet you’re from, the internal angles of a triangle add up to half of the internal angles of a square, the number 17 is prime etc. These are universal truths, which we have discovered, and aliens will have done so too.
They might call a triangle a swafdlebrum and represent the number 17 as a blue dot, but the meaning is ultimately the same.
In contrast it’s quite possible that an alien species has no concept at all of music or poetry or sport because they never thought of those things (perhaps they don’t hear) but we can be certain that any alien sufficiently advanced to reach us has discovered mathematics, and that their mathematical facts are the same as ours
Maths works, regardless of which notation, symbols or units you use. The relationships between circles, cylinders and spheres stay true, no matter whether you measure angles in degrees or radians, or length in metres or inches, or even whether you write numbers as 4 or IV.
The number “2” is not a real thing. It’s an idea. There is no pure number “2” anywhere in the universe.
But you can have 2 apples. You can have 2 rocks. You can have 2 atoms. You can have 2 anything it seems.
And if you have 2 apples and you get another 2 apples you will have 4 apples.
And if you have 5 baskets and each basket has 2 apples in it you will have 10 apples.
And if alien Fizborp has 5 glixxbogs containing 2 plamboos each, then xe has 10 plamboos.
The idea of being able to count things and quantify the universe seems like it would be pretty universal. We haven’t met an alien yet so we can’t say for sure. But you can count anything. The basic math operations work the same on any real objects, as shown above. And advanced math is basically building on those basic patterns of counting and quantifying, and taking them to higher levels of abstraction. They should hold anywhere in the universe.
Math does not explain everything, but it explains what it wants to explain in one singular way near-perfectly. Almost every question that can be answered by math is answered by math or – following precedent – will be answered by math once we understand all the factors.
My native language is dutch and I assume yours isn’t. I can give you an English-Dutch dictionary and some basic grammar and you’ll be able to function within my language on a basic level, but you most likely won’t be able to express yourself fully. Because for some concepts English has words Dutch hasn’t and vice versa. And English and Dutch are closely related.
But if I teach someone the basic meaning of math annotation, they will be able to answer all questions that are relevant to it with it. No matter where you come from (including what planet you come from) the underlying truths of math will be the same. 1+1= 2.
Mathematics is basically a quantification of the world. Everything in the world exists in space and time, and we can quantify everything in space and time. For example, you can measure the circumference of a circle in space, and you can also measure how things develop and evolve in time through differential equations.
Space and time are universal, they necessarily exist everywhere. A famous german philosopher Kant once said that space and time mark the apriori condition for human consciousness, which in simple terms means that for anything to exist in our consciousness it has to exist in space and time. Hence it is universal, anything to exist in our consciousness has to exist in space and time, and anything in space and time can be quantified.