The Unreasonableness of Math is Context Independence
Mathematics has produced some of the most beautiful and elegant abstractions in human history, what can system thinkers learn from their accuracy?
There’s a concept known as the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.” Coined by physicist Eugene Wigner, it refers to the idea that math is unreasonably good at expressing the natural world, that mathematics often developed to describe one set of observations can be reused to describe other scenarios far beyond what could have been predicted.
I’ve always really liked Mario Livio’s description of this concept:
As a software engineer and a systems geek, I’m fascinated by the language of abstractions. I strive to form abstractions that are resilient in the face of changing circumstances and the discovery of new edge cases. So examples of abstractions that have survived hundreds, in some cases thousands of years is super interesting. The form some mathematical concepts appear in today is very much the same as when they were first recorded. They endure even as measurements get more precise and…