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Originally Posted by hallenrm
What about the Darwin's Theory of evolution, was there a maths involved in it?
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In the common language of its proposal as a theory ca. 1860, the math is subtly buried –
The Origin of Species” speaks of numbers of individuals, generations, geographic distributions, and phrases like “equal masses”, “equal numbers”, and “equal continental areas” – numerically quantifiable attributes – but to my knowledge contains not a single mathematical formula. However, the verification of the theory requires considerable math – in it’s early days, statistical analysis of population counts, these days some very sophisticated numeric analysis of genetic data (
bioinformatics).
Without these mathematical approaches, evolutionary biology would not have a scientific character, but a legalistic, even theological one – much as many religious critics of the theory accuse.
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or the Dalton's atomic theory
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Dalton’s atomic theory consists of essentially 5 correct (and, unfortunately, 1 badly incorrect) postulates to allow mathematical formulae such as
Dalton’s law to be formally, mathematically, defensible, not merely empirical. As such, I consider the theory, and nearly all of Dalton’s work, to be intensely mathematical.
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Or for that matter Maslow's theory
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You have me there.
To my knowledge, expressing
Maslow's hierarchy of needs mathematically has attracted little interest or notable success. Metastudies such as “Wahba, M.A. & Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow Reconsidered: A Review of Research on the Need Hierarchy Theory” claim to have found no well-controlled statistical support for the theory.
As critics of Maslow point out, the hierarchy is arguably more of a philosophical idea than a scientific theory. As fundamentally a doctrine of
transcendence, it can be considered a form of
secular humanism, which some would claim constitutes as religion.
While Maslow’s ideas – both the hierarchy and his more succinct aphorism “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” (which can be applied to mathematicians’ outlook on the universe) – have been a major influence on me personally, I’m forced to concede that, as commonly used, they’re not truly scientific.
I must stress that accepting the proposition that scientific theories have a fundamentally mathematical character does not imply that one must have great mathematical proficiency to appreciate, understand, and contribute to science. However, just as an architect doesn’t need to by physically capable of digging a foundation or hauling block, but needs workmen who are, the full work of science can’t, IMHO, be done without the contribution of skilled mathematicians. Math-free approaches to science, especially theoretical physics and cosmology, are prone to straying into the troubled domain of pseudoscience.
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