Equations like E=mc^2 and stuff like how the force og gravity becomes 1/4 as strong when the distance between the objects dobles. Similarly with braking distance with cars, double the speed and the braking distance quadruples. These all seem to fit so well.
Have we made math to fit so nicely with physics? Am I thinking of all this wrong? Since I feel it like it would be to big of a coincidense that we can so easily use equations to predic physics. What is actually the reason for this?
In: Mathematics
Math, as I believe you intend it, is a descriptive tool. The reason it explains the mechanisms behind our life is because it’s the tool best suited to do that.
Think of it as a universal language for quantities and measurement (Very reductive, but bear with me). The same way we can describe a tree, a person or a feeling, we can describe a ratio, predict the outcome of a situation and trace the orbit of planets, or of electrons.
In a way, yes, we have made specific equations to fit our observations, much like we make up new words to describe new objects or aspects of reality. We began counting – the elements were there, we just needed a way to say how many – then adding and subtracting to keep track. You must consider that every bit of math has been formulated, analyzed, refined and perfected, or discarded and reformulated, every time a challenge to it ensued. New phenomena or observations may require revisiting existent laws.
What makes it through is what we use as math and as a base for any future theory. As for why things follow certain patterns, that I do not know. But math specifically looks at those patterns and seeks to describe them, it doesn’t “happen to match” right away. If anything, any theory is studied on a sample or an abstraction, and any new fitting result just means that we observed and formulated our hypotheses correctly.
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