Mathematics and God
|
|
Template:NPOV Template:Move to Wikiquote A number of famous mathematicians have made connections between mathematics and God, often likening God to a mathematician.
The ancient Greek study of mathematics was closely related to that of religion. Plato is quoted as saying "God ever geometrizes" and Pythagoras as saying "numbers rule the Universe".
Johannes Kepler stated that "The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics."
Isaac Newton became extremely religious in his old age, and devoted the rest of his life to the study of religion.
Leopold Kronecker is quoted as saying "God made the integers, all the rest is the work of man."
James Jeans said "From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe begins to appear as a pure mathematician".
According to Henri Poincaré, "If God speaks to man, he undoubtedly uses the language of mathematics."
Georg Cantor equated what he called the Absolute Infinite with God. He held that the Absolute Infinite had various mathematical properties, including (if I recall correctly) that every property of the Absolute Infinite is also held by some smaller object.
Saint Anselm's ontological argument sought to use logic to prove the existence of God. A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz.
Kurt Gödel created a formalization of Leibniz' version of the ontological argument for God's existence known as Gödel's ontological proof.
Recently, Stephen D. Unwin employed Bayesian probabilities, a statistical method devised by 18th-century Presbyterian minister and mathematician Reverend Thomas Bayes, to compute the probability of God's existence.
According to the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, "an equation is meaningless to me unless it expresses a thought of God." He often said that in Mathematics alone, one can have a concrete realisation of God. 0/0, he used to ask, "what is its value?" It may be anything. "The zero of the numerator may be several times the zero of denominator and vice versa. The value cannot be determined. In the same way 2^n - 1 will denote the primordial God and several divinities. When n is zero the expression denotes zero, there is nothing; when n is 1, the expression denotes unity, the Infinite God. When n is 2, the expression denotes Trinity; when n is 3, the expression denotes 7, the Saptharishis and so on."