With Best Play for both sides Chess is a Draw--So Why Do We Play?

This book has been around for many years.  Great read.  You'll enjoy it

No thanks.  Just reading the cover where the author is compared to Euclid and claims to single-handedly revolutionize mathematics, yet the book "that has been around for many years" with zero reviews on Amazon...tells me what I need to know.  I am not paying *cough* $55 bucks to find out I am reading a bunch of hooey :).

It costs $11.  Great introduction to the History of Mathematics by an emeritus Professor from NYU.  Lots of scholars have cited him, repeatedly.

The book you looked at was a collectors item, apparently.  This one is not --

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Loss-Certainty-Morris-Kline/dp/1435136063/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378247799&sr=1-2&keywords=mathematics+loss+of+certainty

P.S.  Never buy a book by its back cover.  It's probably in your local library, too.  

I followed the link you posted ;).  I will consider the $11 book, but I am still dubious.

The nature of numbers and their existence is not a question of mathematics or science; it's a question of philosophy

Why not just say it's a question of astrology?  You would make the same amount of sense.  The man-made nomenclature/system of numbers and mathematical rules and theorems represent a communicable representation of hard, cold, universal properties.  Math cannot be a question of human philosophy, because those properties existed long before man, and will endure long after man is gone.

I am sorry that many people in this thread cannot understand that non-material forces and properties (like, say, gravity) are real things, and not concepts.

I am a philosopher myself, but even so, I am not crazy enough to claim that numbers and math are just concepts that somehow define themselves.

Using God in an argument is not solid at all but I digress. I never said inches did not exist, the concept of inches as always been there. The concept of everything we have found out has always been there. We just came up with a way to explain them. This is how numbers developed. Before us, numbers did not exist but the concept did. 

They may not have existed in the minds of men, but it didn't mean they didn't exist. Good luck proving that one...

...God is the basis for all knowledge and every logical argument, otherwise, you have no foundation with any credibility or begining to rely on...

...I guess you could try to make one up, you wouldn't be the first or the last...

...let's see how educated you are...

How long has existence existed ?

"The things mathematics explains will still exist, but there will be no way to explain them."

I agree with these. But I think when some people say "numbers" or "math," they mean the former part of your sentence, not the latter. If you define math by the latter, I agree that math doesn't exist. And yet I thought of math as or at least including the former, so it's good to make sure that when people say "math" they are all talking about the same thing :)

Sapient dust mentioned an interesting distinction -- perhaps the things numbers explain could be explained by some other system (not just different names for "one," or "two," but a system different in some more fundamental way, whatever that would be) that we just haven't happened to come up with. I guess it's kind of like how we might represent light as a particle or a wave only because particles and waves are, for us humans, able to form some consistent system that we can make sense out of. Maybe light isn't a particle or a wave but some other thing we can't comprehend.

Still, even if there is some other system than math to explain the same realities, those realities that are being explained are nonetheless always there, regardless of what humans do. The world doesn't conform to human conventions; it's the other way around; our systems take what is there and put it into some language for our purposes.

"How long has existence existed ?"

I'd say forever. Such a statement may not seem to make sense in terms of our system of time (because it would seem to imply that there was an infinite amount of time before now, so how did we get to now? I've struggled with this issue myself; however...) but again, the world doesn't necessarily conform to our system of time -- it's just that a system of time was and is an effective way to keep track of things for us humans.

Just like with the mathmatics, you complicated a simple occurance that is evident by simple observation.

The easy way to know existence has always existed, using our commonly occuring terminology and our system for keeping track of time is to use the knowledge of it, while reasoning to one's self, a few simple scientific principles. The thing, or better yet, the idea we refer to as nothing, doesn't and therefore couldn't spontaneously become something else. Therefore, something other than nothing has always existed for eternity and therefore always will. People love to deny the possible of eternal anything and an immortal anything, unless of course it is them, in charge of their free will and destiny....

Simple math...simple science...yet physists and mathematicians would rather complicate something so simple as 2+2=4 in order to avoid a common realization... pathetic and sad

It can be a simple thing, and your explanation seems pretty good, but it's more interesting, to me, to think about how this can coexist with "time" as the issue is, at least seemingly, rather paradoxical. The universe pretty much has to be infinite because the alternative is even stranger (how would the world just spontaneously pop into existence? If there was a trigger, then that would be some existent thing, contradicting non-existence), yet it conflicts with how we like to mark everything as having a start point -- we really like our start points -- that there is probably an infinite amount of time before us is a confusing thing to think about given how we normally think about time. I know in the end it all must make sense, but for me the interesting question is how.

So, I personally think these issues are quite interesting and give insights into how the universe is, versus the systems we create to represent them.

I would not say God is a credible source. How credible is something that cannot be proven? But we could have a God debate somewhere else, but I do believe one exists.......... Once again I repeat, all the concepts math explains have been around, dare I say, forever. I am not saying man created gravity, that would be absolutely stupid, to say the least. What I am saying is that before man, gravity could not be explained. For the longest time, man could not explain gravity... and I am sure we are not done explaining it. 

Gravity could be explained before man was around, just not to man, if they didn't exist yet...they isn't much point in use reasoning things if I require a monotheistic creator as a basis and you need a bunch of atheistic, humanistic theories...we will always be at an impasse...we can agree to disagree and move on...

The question is whether the universal properties exist as such in nature, or whether that's just how you and me and most other people conceptualize and verbalize the actual evidence we have: the actual evidence is just observed regularities in the universe, which can be concisely expressed using mathematics and the particular concepts that people refer to as number, shape, point, function, implication, negation, conjunction, disjunction, etc. The fact that X can be explained using the concepts of A, B, and C doesn't imply that A, B, and C exist independently in the universe. They might just exist as useful concepts in your head, which is a kind of existence to be sure, but not one that is possible without the existence of creatures that have such thoughts.

Saying something is a matter of philosophy is not the same as saying that it didn't exist before people existed. There is no deductive proof that numbers exist (as opposed to being useful conceptualizations that we use to explain observed regularities in the universe), and there is no evidence one way or the other that numbers "really exist out there" or they "exist in people's minds as extremely useful mental tools".

Most of this discussion comes down to how you define your terms (e.g., what types of things exist & what types of existence are there) and the criteria for deciding how to answer particular claims about existence. It is naive to think that the universe itself suggests exactly one way of making those definitions and exactly one set of criteria for answering such claims.

Atheistic theories are what got us where we are today. 

Out of curiosity, which monotheistic creator do you subscribe to? Also, what's wrong with polytheistic creators? They all have the exact same amount of proof... a book.

Yay ! Closure by soon due to religious nonsense !

Congrats, guys. It was hard to bring Vishnu in this thread, yet you managed to do it.

As a matter of fact, the issue raised and the argumentation provided by the OP has had an almost religous-like undertone all along.

Both "A perfect chess game must be drawn" and "God exists" are statements each of which can be assumed to have to be either true or false - however, we neither know, nor have a means to learn for any of these statements if it is specifically true or specifically false. As a result, if one chooses to insist on opting for one of the alternatives, it is a matter of belief.

jaaas Would you not say that if one sees a ton of evidence for say "a perfect game must be drawn" while it is a belief or an opinion--it would be an "informed belief" or an "informed opinion"

As for "God" chess.com has a place to discuss religion or free discussion and that is "Open Discussion" 

Many religious figures and/or philosophers happen to attempt to argue various points concerning religion (such as the probably most fundamental one mentioned above) more often than not employing a method of argumentation bearing an uncanny reseamblance to yours (i.e. pointing at supposed "overwhelming circumstantial evidence", etc.).