[Alta-Logic] Peripatetic talk: 15th June by Jason Nicholson

[Robin Cockett]

Title: A Perspective on Wigner’s “Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”

Speaker: Jason Nicholson

Place: ICT 616


Time: 3;30pm, 15th Feb 2012

Abstract : Since Eugene Wigner published his article “The Unreasonable 
Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” in 1960, the idea 
of it has been in the back of the minds of many, especially 
mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of science. There have been 
several responses over the years, but nothing has stood out. A possible 
reason for this, explored in this talk, is that all explanations are 
within the paradigm of the subject-object metaphysics commonly used by 
our culture, and any explanation of this quandary lies beyond such a 
metaphysics. The metaphysics that will be used here instead, which 
subsumes subject-object metaphysics, is the broader ‘Metaphysics of 
Quality’ as created by Robert M. Pirsig and explained in his two 
extraordinary books ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and 
‘Lila’. This metaphysics provides a strikingly simple way of 
understanding Wigner’s observation, as well as insights into several 
other questions in and around mathematics and physics.