Klein &Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY – The Adventure of Physics. =. Mathematics is an indispensable and powerful tool where it has been demonstrated that it applies to a real world experience. However, it is inappropriate and, as Dingle points out, potentially dangerous, to give credence to deductions arising purely from the language of mathematics. The problem is that mathematicians now dominate physics and it is fashionable for them to follow Einstein’s example, with fame going to those with the most fantastic notions that defy experience and common sense. So we have the Big Bang, dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings, wormholes in space, time travel, and so on and on. It has driven practically minded students from the subject. There is an old Disney cartoon where the scientist is portrayed with eyes closed, rocking backwards in his chair and sucking on a pipe, which at intervals emits a smoke-cloud of mathematical symbols. Much of modern physics is a smoke-screen of Disneyesque fantasy. Inappropriate mathematical models are routinely used to describe the universe. Yet the physicists hand us the ash from their pipes as if it were gold dust. If only they would use the ashtrays provided. “It seems that every practitioner of physics has had to wonder at some point why mathematics and physics have come to be so closely entwined. Opinions vary on the answer. Bertrand Russell acknowledged “Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little.” … Mathematics may be indispensable to physics, but it obviously does not constitute physics.”
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