Sir Timothy Gowers: What is Mathematics?

Sir Timothy Gowers, Professeur titulaire of the Combinatorics chair at the Collège de France, talks to G-Research ahead of his talk - What is Mathematics? - at our Computer Guided Mathematics Symposium.
Held at the Science Museum in Central London, Sir Timothy was the last of our three speakers, alongside Alex Davies (DeepMind) and Kevin Buzzard (Professor of Pure Mathematics at Imperial College London).
The G-Research Computer Guided Mathematics Symposium was the final event in our 2022 Distinguished Speaker Series. Want to watch the talks? Check out our Computer Guided Mathematics Symposium playlist here: • G-Research Computer Gu...
If you're interested in attending future Distinguished Speaker Series events, please register your details here: events.beamery...

[@Wouldntyouliketoknow2]

So maths is a domain, which has its own consistent language (with unprovably true statements) - in which you can express logic. The logic is abstract (compared to the physical world). I would take the view that logic must be more fundamental than our physical universe and laws because a logical process must have given rise to our physical universe - because if it wasn't logical, then it has no hope of ever being explained or understood. Given maths encompasses that physical abstraction layer that enabled the physical universe, it can describe all the physical laws but its also capable of describing all possible physicsl laws - in other words for all possible universes. One example is string theory. A great mathematical theory that describes some laws of physics - just maybe not for our particular universe.

[@Mathislife-sv2fe]

Why did he run away from analysis?

[@HowardARoark]

I like maths but not so sure about AI.