Mathematical Truth

numbers

Are mathematical truths invented or discovered?

 “Mathematics is not either invented or discovered; the dichotomy is false.”
― George P. Lakoff

“One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its propositions are absolutely certain and indisputable, … How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”
― Albert Einstein

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
― Isaac Newton

 

42

42The number forty two as the answer to a most ambitious question.

“In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (42 is) ‘The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named ‘Earth’.”
― Wikipedia Article: 42 (number)

Honest truth

How can we be entirely honest and yet not speak that which is truth?

I would say because we are bound by our human limitations … bound, constrained, limited. As we are able to expand our boundaries by overcoming our limitations we may honestly change our opinions* and move closer to that which is true.

*Opinions―actions, judgements, conclusions … world view …

When we are honest we speak the truth as we understand the truth to be.

Our understanding is limited. We are not; omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Our understanding is limited to what we individually do know. A humble heart is most conducive to an honest answer …