D&D 5E Scientist background

abe ray · Jun 30, 2019

Don’t scientists in our world use complicated mathematical formulas to try to explain their various theories?

jaelis · Jun 30, 2019

Some scientists do, but not all. You might be thinking of physicists, but botanists are scientists too.

Cap'n Kobold · Jun 30, 2019

abe ray said:
Don’t scientists in our world use complicated mathematical formulas to try to explain their various theories?

Mathematicians do. Some quantum physicists perhaps?

Generally scientists explain their theories by pointing out that when they do a thing, the result matches this particular mechanism. Illustrations and language will depend on the science.

Garthanos · Jul 1, 2019

Cap'n Kobold said:
Mathematicians do. Some quantum physicists perhaps?

Generally scientists explain their theories by pointing out that when they do a thing, the result matches this particular mechanism. Illustrations and language will depend on the science.

Even that involves statistical analysis .... everybody has math

Garthanos · Jul 1, 2019

Math underpins every scientific field in a modern environment at minimum if you present evidence there are statistical analysis of that evidence.

Paul Farquhar · Jul 1, 2019

Quantum Physics is easy. It's statistical analysis that is hard.

Garthanos · Jul 1, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Quantum Physics is easy. It's statistical analysis that is hard.

Probabilistic physics with funky models.

Paul Farquhar · Jul 1, 2019

Joking aside, there is a general assumption in quantum physics that if the maths looks complicated, then it's probably wrong. The obective is to find the simpler maths that underlies the complexity.

jaelis · Jul 1, 2019

Garthanos said:
Even that involves statistical analysis .... everybody has math

Well, the claim seems to have drifted from "scientists use complicated mathematical formulas to try to explain their theories" to "scientists use math." The second statement is certainly more defensible, but still I think misses the point. Science is fundamentally about having an idea, testing it objectively against some form of experiment, and then revising or rejecting the idea as required. Math is often useful for making an objective comparison between the idea and experiment, but its not the central concept. Saying that all scientists use math is maybe like saying all carpenters use hammers. While its probably true that the vast majority of carpenters do sometimes use a hammers in some way, I bet that not many of them would agree that hammer use is a defining quality of the trade.

And though you are right that including statistics brings more scientists into the math arena, a lot of the time that doesn't mean much more than plugging data in to a software package and seeing what it tells you. While a good biologist, say, should have a pretty clear conceptual understanding of what the software is doing, they wouldn't have any reason to delve into the math itself.

jaelis · Jul 1, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Joking aside, there is a general assumption in quantum physics that if the maths looks complicated, then it's probably wrong. The obective is to find the simpler maths that underlies the complexity.

"Simple" to a mathematician or physicist doesn't mean quite the same thing as simple to a layperson though. Maxwell's equations are paragons of simplicity and elegance, but they still involve pretty gnarly vector calculus. (You can simplify them even further using tensor notation, but now you're doing tensor calculus!)