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From: Athel Cornish-Bowden <me@yahoo.com>
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Subject: Re: Spacetime
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2024 18:17:45 +0200
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On 2024-07-05 13:01:12 +0000, gharnagel said:

> Maciej Wozniak wrote:
>> 
>> W dniu 04.07.2024 o 23:10, gharnagel pisze:
>>> 
>>> Maciej Wozniak wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Like numbers - nonexistent, right, Har, poor halfbrain?
>>> 
>>> Now you're getting the idea.  Good job!
>> 
>> So - you don't believe that there exists the
>> smallest prime number, right, Har, poor halfbrain?
> 
> Such a stupid question doesn't really deserve a response, but
> I'll be condescending to the poor eighth-brain.
> 
> Mathematics is a human invention.  Basically, it's just
> counting.  We count things in the real world: apples, sheep,
> fingers, etc.

Something I found absolutely brilliant when I first read it is the 
chapter in volume 1 of Feynman's Lectures on Physics, where he starts 
with counting sheep and proceeds in simple understandable steps to 
logarithms and Euler's identity (e^{i pi} + 1 = 0).

>   Anything else is frosting on the cake.
> 
> I like frosting (I have a degree in mathematics, so I obviously
> do), but anyone who believes numbers, any number, exist as real
> objects out there in the universe somewhere has bats in his belfry.

Well, in Wozzie's case we knew that already.

-- 
athel -- biochemist, not a physicist, but detector of crackpots