Is Math Invented or Discovered?: Event

“The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious… there is no rational explanation for it,” wrote Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner. There are mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena on all scales: Fibonacci series in flowers, logarithmic spirals in snails, fractals in mountain ranges, parabolas in home runs, and pi in the spherical shape of stars, planets, and bubbles. But is math discovered in nature or is it invented by humans and imposed on reality?

Physicist Max Tegmark argues in his book, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, that mathematics does not simply describe the universe, but that the universe is mathematics and that human beings are self-aware parts of a giant mathematical object. Cognitive scientist Rafael Núñez, who co-authored with George Lakoff the book Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being and invented a new field, the cognitive science of mathematics, argues that approaching mathematics as a transcendental truth feeds a romantic myth and simply is not true.

Working with artist Charles Atlas, Kari curated this lively conversation as a companion to his video installation The Mathematics of Consciousness. The program challenged audiences to reconsider the nature of mathematics and deepened their understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed. Kari also worked with the PW science team to book the guests, research and script the conversation, and produce the event.