Do numbers exist?

I used complex numbers a lot to describe the characteristics of electrical circuits. I don’t know how else to describe the relationship between voltage and current, leading or lagging each other in circuits with capacitors and inductors.
Those are very real, measurable effects.
Brrr… It’s cold outside now: 22F, -5C Do degrees exist?

I figure complex numbers are a language – a way to document and communicate with others. I used quaternions in my Masters thesis to describe the motion of spatial 4-bar mechanisms.

In my view, mathematics as a whole only exists as a construct within a mind, as a language that describes reality, but reality is not that description.
You can use a brush and paint to create an image of a person, detailed and accurate down the last pore and hair, but that painting is not the person, and the person is not the painting.

For those who doubt the reality of numbers, how would you explain why cicadas have prime numbered life cycles ?

@LostInParadise “This is a pretty good introduction to the topic.

As far as cicadas are concerned, you’re not talking about numbers, but of patterns. One could document such a process with colored stones and grey stones in a spiral to represent the pattern without ever using numbers to describe it.

In other words, I don’t think the question of whether complex numbers exist is fundamentally any different than the question of whether numbers themselves exist, philosophically.

Everything that comes from our minds in “man” made. Somehow people seem to not realize this. Like without us nothing else exists and that is just laughable. Numbers, like literally everything else, is just a human concept that only matters to humans and nothing else.

@RayaHope “Numbers, like literally everything else, is just a human concept that only matters to humans and nothing else.”

If that were true than the number:

“2374740827409672409476027307462037460927403976092374607320846730293409906738789432723134255638984765379085739469642302746283963298”

Would only exist while someone on the planet was thinking about it, right? Given that there’s an infinite quantity of numbers and only so many human minds that are only ever thinking about numbers (and probably most commonly the set from -100 to 100) some of the time. That would mean that most numbers don’t exist most of the time.

Furthermore, the laws of the universe appear to obey the rules of math before humans existed and in all likelihood well after we’re gone.

@gorillapaws you lost me. Numbers don’t matter to anything BUT humans. Animals don’t use numbers, plants can’t count, the Earth could explode right now and the universe would not even notice.

@RayaHope “Earth could explode right now and the universe would not even notice.”

But the explosion itself would follow the rules of physics, which are based on math/numbers. The universe may not “notice” but the orbits of the other planets would react accordingly based on numbers.

Also there are animals that can count.

Based on numbers that humans came up with to describe the workings on natural things in order to try and comprehend how things work. We needed to invent a way to understand the nature of our perceived surroundings.

Sorry I’m on Facebook, Reddit, YouTube and here at the same time…lol!

@LuckyGuy Do you use Euler’s number” also known as e^x in your electronic calculations? I used it in electronics semiconductor class in college. I never understood it. I just used it.

I always thought the number 5 was too complex. It’s like what are you…an ‘S’ where I have to draw a straight hat on top of it. That’s silly. And stop trying to impersonate an S. Be your own thing. 1 looks too much like an i and 0 looks too much like an O, but at least they’re simple strokes. But 5 is both pretentious and an extra stroke.

(yes being deliberately silly)

@gorillapaws , The article that you linked to does an excellent job of showing the two sides of the question of whether numbers exist. It definitely comes down to how we handle abstraction. I wonder if artificial intelligence will ever be able to deal with abstract concepts.

@LostInParadise “It definitely comes down to how we handle abstraction.”

Like many questions in philosophy, it’s something that feels like it should be simple and obvious, but has no good answers and only leads to more questions when you really peel back the first layer or two.

They exist in as much as any numbers exist and if they didn’t exist we would have to invent them.