Math - the Engine of the Sciences

Math started by recognizing patterns in the environment. It was a science of patterns.

Certain disciplines which grew out of math, have taken this ability of “recognizing patterns” to a totally different level.

Information Science helped to digitise all information. It also helped design integrated circuits which could hold enormous amounts of data in extremely small devices. The speed of computing also increased to unimaginable speeds.

Computer Science developed software like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning which could analyse huge amounts of data in ways humans could never hope to do.

In 2020, an AI software called RoseTTafold, developed by DeepMind, helped biologists understand the extremely complex ways in which long protein chains fold in 3-D space.

A group of researchers have presented an automated conjecturing system that they call the Ramanujan Machine, which has already conjectured several original and important formulas for universal constants that show up in mathematics.

In 2021, Mathematicians derive the formulas for boundary layer turbulence 100 years after the phenomenon was first formulated. Math & Social Sciences

Until recently the interaction between social sciences and math was limited to use of statistical methods and economic models.

Mathematicians define patterns in a variety of ways — numerical, shape, motion, behavior, population, voting, patterns, and repetition of events.

These patterns can be imaginative or real, visual or mental, static or dynamic, qualitative or quantitative. These patterns are the reason behind the various new fields.

Social sciences work on premises very different to those in physical sciences. Cause & effect correlations are not very strong. The amount of data needed to extract patterns of cause & effect was enormous. Analysing such huge amounts of data was beyond the capability of humans.

Math provided social sciences also a tool to analyse such data.

Math has become the very engine of development of all sciences, both physical & social.

Biologist E O Wilson contends that budding scientists need to understand the processes, powers & weaknesses of mathematics & develop mathematical thinking well to become great scientists.

“Mathematics is a science of patterns” needs to be understood at a totally different level!