A research team from the English University of Canterbury discovered a new approach that considers arithmetic principles; For example: multiplication and division have a “biological” origin, which answers a hundred-year-old question about the foundations on which all mathematics is built.

According to a study recently published by the team in the journal “Psychological Review,” some behaviors and cognitive mechanisms in the animal world (particularly bees) are, in essence, similar to the foundations of arithmetic operations.

For example, many non-human species, including insects, show a capacity for spatial movement that appears to be equivalent to algebraic arithmetic. Where bees make a zigzag journey to find nectar, they may turn from a direct route, as if calculating the direction and distance home.

One plus one

To understand the concept of this study, we can start with a simple question. Which: Why does one plus one equal two? You might think that this statement is completely self-evident, but an attempt to prove it in the book “Principia Mathematica” written in the early twentieth century by British Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell took hundreds of pages. They attempted to provide rigorous evidence to justify this statement: (one plus one equals two), using complex mathematical symbols and a fair amount of logical reasoning.

In this case, mathematicians use a set of postulates to build bit by bit to prove the validity of this mathematical statement.

Postulates are propositions or statements that are true by themselves and require no proof. All right angles are congruent, and as you say it is natural, a right angle is any angle equal to 90 degrees – which we learned in the early stages – so all right angles are congruent.

The importance of proving sentences like “one plus one equals two” stems from the need to prove the integrity of all mathematics, up to the most complex equations in physical theories that explain the behavior of cosmic bodies. Like: black holes and neutron stars, and everything from the phone to the mechanism of action in your life, even your body.

Four principles

But since this task is mathematically complex and scientists in this range have not reached the final solution, the University of Canterbury team decided to take an exceptional way to prove the validity of the calculations. Like: Division and multiplication are fundamentals found in the natural world.

According to one of the study’s authors, Randolph Grace, in an article on “The Conversation,” the team concluded that the four foundations of cognition in living things are similar to the fundamentals and principles of mathematics needed to demonstrate them. validity of statements; For example: “One plus one equals two.” These principles are arrangement, convergence, continuity and symmetry, and the latter is symmetry or equality of forms.

For example, arrangement is a fixed principle to maintain the order of things, for example, we know that things get bigger the closer we get to them, and vice versa for the principle of symmetry, which refers to mechanism. By this we perceive degrees of similarity between things, so we know – for example – that a cat is close to a dog in the shape of a rock.

Of course, this new method is still a different attempt to prove the foundations of mathematics, but it undoubtedly requires the study and study of mathematicians.

Mathematics is everywhere

However, in this context, we all agree that mathematics appears everywhere in the universe for no apparent reason, so mathematics – for example – tells us about the very precise first parts of the first second in the life of this universe. It describes the behavior of the smallest particles that make up the largest galaxies and all of our bodies.

All you need to know is that a mathematical formula; Like: “Fibonacci series”, that famous sequence in which each number is equal to the sum of the two numbers before it, so it’s “1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…” and so on, flowers, From snails, facial expressions, plant wrappers, and the shape of hurricanes to studying the behavior of big data online, they are an important part of the composition of many phenomena in nature.

Max Teckmark, an American physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says this implies that the entire universe is essentially a mathematical structure. From that point of view, the University of Canterbury team’s efforts are nothing more than a study of the mathematics of the universe, as represented in the behavior of certain organisms.