Science Quickly: Math

Cheng: I think sometimes people accuse math of not being real because mathematicians have just kind of made it up. And they say that like it’s a bad thing. But I want to say that’s a great thing. Isn’t that amazing? So it’s like language: Is language real? Well, it’s just something humans made up to communicate about the world around us. We just invented it, but it works. It enables us to communicate amazing things. The fact that it’s made-up makes it particularly powerful because we can keep making up more of it, and we’ll never run out of it as long as our brains don’t run out of imagination. You know, with other stuff we invent, we run out of resources. We run out of money. We have to spend money buying equipment. We have to bug somebody else to give us money for things. Not with abstract math —it’s only limited by our imagination. 

Santos: So we may not have a total consensus on the exact nature of math. But whatever it is, we can all agree that math works. We can use it to predict where trash will end up in the ocean. We can pinpoint a person’s spot on the globe using satellites. And it’s also fun, and maybe that’s enough.

Feltman: Join us next Friday for the final episode in our Fascination miniseries “The Hidden Nature of Math.” Kyne, what mysteries will we dive into next time?

Santos: We’re headed out to the bleeding edge of the field to look at all the math being discovered today —and all the math we’ve yet to find.

Feltman: I can’t wait. Listeners, don’t forget to tune in on Monday for our weekly news roundup. Until then, for Scientific American's Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.