Controversial mathematics

[rant]

What is math

Mathematics is an academic discipline, the so-called "queen of all science". But mathematics is not really a science; although it may employ rigor in its method, the subject of its study is controversial as it cannot be found empirically in the physical reality - mathematical truths come a priori.

For example, the fact that there in no largest prime number: seemed true, was shown to be true, was always true, would be true even if we didn't know what primes, or as a matter, math itself, were; an eternal truth independent of the human mind, a "must be".

And that's exactly what math's about - the search for things that must be true, no matter what, regardless of everything else, even regardless of us, the researchers.

Math as relagion

Mathematics is also a religion, a belief that perfect forms exist in a reality utterly separate from our earthly physical realm. People that practice mathematical beliefs are called mathematicians and they believe in a priori, eternal knowledge, independent of our or any other universe, that was already revealed or is jsut waiting to be discovered. They stand in opposition (well, to the side) to physicists that have traded a priori for empirical, evidence-based, knowledge. However, physics is based on math, and physicist use math formulae in their work so, there you go.

What distinguises math from other organized forms of religion is that math has a good record in describing our imperfect physical universe using models rooted in the perfect forms of mathematical universe. Approximation makes good, so that's why most tolerate it, and some even enagage it. Also sometimes, math methods find practical purpose and application in our physical universe. And sometimes even a useful one.

Newton produces theories that were surprisingly accurate; but then Einstein came up with his theories, just out of his head to the paper, without not much, if any, empirical evidence, that were shown to be extremelly precise in decribing the interactions in the universe such as the bending of light around massive objects, the gravitational lensing, etc. But the astonishment came only later when we were capable to conduct these experiments or even mere observations - then it was found that Einstein's formulae were accurate to the one part in 10^14. So the phenomena that he could not have observed, Einstein managed to describe very precisely using only thought experiments, and math. Moreover, the theories he produced continue to work as new observations are made.

Indeed, math frequentlly comes up with descriptions, pulled from the Platonic universe, that very accurately descibe our physical universe. However, only a small part of math has any application to out reality; the math in its current stage of development is mostly composed of the things unrelated (as far as we can tell at the moment) to the physical world. But sometimes, often unexpectedly, a subject from pure math does find its application and turns out to be very fruitful in a particular problem domain (primes in cryptography).